f  1 1 


f 


N 


.  77. 


y. 


' 


h 


Sermons  from 
Shakespeare 

By  FATHER  L.  J.  VAUGHAN 


PUBLISHER 

C.  H.  BARTLETT  CO. 
Janesville,  Wis. 


LOAN  STACK 


Vi 


'*  J?ote 


We  feel  that  we  are  to  be  congratulated  in 
being  at  last  able  to  answer  the  insistent  demand 
of  the  students  and  instructors  in  literature,  and 
give  to  the  public  Father  Vaughan's  "Sermons 
from  Shakespeare"  in  book  form. 

We  feel  that  few  men,  if  any,  has  done  so 
much  to  stimulate  an  interest  in  Shakespeare 
amongst  the  American  public  as  Father  Vaughan 
in  his  public  lectures.  Certainly  no  student  of 
our  times  has  excited  more  favorable  comment 
for  the  originality  of  his  treatment,  and  illumi- 
nating and  simplifying  of  what  has  always  ap- 
peared a  most  difficult  study. 

If  we  needed  any  proof  of  his  value  as  an 
illuminating  influence  in  the  study  of  the  Im- 
mortal Bard  the  greatest  proof  would  be  his 
wonderful  success  and  rapid  growth  in  popu- 
larity, which  has  made  him,  in  the  course  of  a 
few  years,  acquire  an  international  reputation 
which  has  caused  so  great  a  demand  for  his  lec- 
tures that  he  can  no  longer  answer  that  demand 
in  person.  And  so  the  requests  for  his  lectures 
in  printed  form  make  us  feel  ourselves  espe- 
cially favored  in  being  able  to  present  his  works 
to  the  public. 


497 


preface 

Since  we  are  about  to  discuss  the  workfcof 
a  great  genius,  it  seems  to  me  that  in  order  to 
appreciate  them  at  their  proper  value,  and  place 
them  where  they  belong  in  the  world  of  art,  our 
first  step  should  be  to  form  some  clear  idea  in 
our  minds  as  to  just  what  constitutes  genius  as 
applied  to  art. 

To  me  genius  is  that  indefinable  sensitiveness 
of  a  great  soul  that  causes  him  to  see  the  spirit 
of  the  Creator  in  every  created  thing,  and,  em- 
bodying that  spirit  into  his  work,  gives  to  the 
work  of  his  hand  a  soul.  This  is  what  makes  the 
work  of  genius  art.  The  great  artist  is  there- 
fore always  a  student  of  nature — a  lover  of  God's 
great  world.  To  him  the  universe  is  a  living 
thing.  He  communes  with  nature  as  with  a 
friend.  The  sighing  trees,  moaning  and  whis- 
pering as  they  bend  their  heads  together,  tell 
to  his  soul  the  mysteries  of  nature.  The  light- 
ning flash  and  the  thunder  roll  is  the  groan  of 
the  universe  at  outraged  nature.  The  varied 


flowers,  nodding  and  bending  as  he  passes  by, 
read  to  his  eye  a  story  in  colors.  In  this  close 
communion  with  nature  he  learns  many  laws,  un- 
earths mysteries,  finds  a  void  in  the  heart  of 
nature,  and  with  the  yearning  of  a  genius,  he 
longs  to  disclose  to  others  the  knowledge  he  has 
gained.  Now,  how  may  he  do  this?  If  he  be  a 
painter  he  paints  a  picture;  if  he  be  a  poet  he 
weives  a  verse;  if  he  be  a  musician  he  builds 
a  theme.  But  the  painting,  the  poem,  the  musical 
tones  are  neither  his  end  nor  his  object.  The 
material  work  is  but  the  medium  to  convey  a 
mighty  thought — to  teach  a  lasting  lesson — gen- 
ius is  but  laboring  to  put  into  imperishable  form 
the  vapory  images  of  his  soul. 

The  true  work  of  art,  then,  is  never  a  mere 
copy  of  nature — the  reproduction  of  an  existing 
thing.  This  would  be  but  mimicry,  requiring 
rather  the  animal  propensity  of  the  barbarian 
than  the  crucial  judgment  of  cultured  intelli- 
gence. No !  Art  does,  if  you  will,  mimic  nature. 
Art  does,  if  you  insist,  reproduce  existing  im- 
ages; but  it  does  more.  It  idealizes  nature,  it 
clarifies  the  material  form,  that  looking  beyond 
we  may  see  the  id_eal.  Nature  presents  for 
our  consideration  always  the  particular  thing. 
Art  never  the  particular,  always  the  universal. 
Nature  holds  up  for  our  study  the  person,  the 


individual.  Art  never  the  person,  but  always 
the  type,  the  species,  the  genus. 

Nature  is  an  analysis,  art  is  a  synthesis. 

It  is  necessary  to  keep  this  principle  before  us 
if  we  would  understand  the  works  of  genius. 
And  in  no  work  will  we  find  this  more  neces- 
sary than  in  the  Immortal  works  of  Shakespeare. 

L.  J.  VAUGHAN. 


ftermon*  from 

It  is  with  a  sense  of  deep  responsibility  that  I 
venture  to  speak  to  you  on  an  educational  subject. 
I  say  educational,  because  to  me  Shakespeare  is 
a  liberal  education.  For,  after  all,  when  we 
come  to  understand  education  properly,  it  means 
something-  more  than  a  knowing  of  dates  and 
facts  and  figures,  something  more  than  a  memor- 
izing of  rules  and  formulas.  Education,  when 
you  come  to  understand  it  truly,  means  taking 
the  first  steps  out  into  God's  great  world;  it  is 
getting  our  bearings  aright  on  the  sea  of  life. 

To  me  education  is  the  lighting  of  a  lamp, 
by  which  we  may  read  aright  the  enigma  of  life ; 
the  unfolding  of  the  human  soul,  whereby  we 
may  drink  in  the  wonders  and  the  mysteries  and 
the  laws  and  the  beauties  which  the  hand  of 
God  has  painted  all  o'er  the  face  of  nature. 

True  education-  is  to  know  something  of  the 
heart-aches,  the  death-pangs,  the  anxious  seek- 
ings,  the  bitter  disappointments  and  the  soul's 
yearning  of  the  human  race,  and  so  be  able  to 
attune  our  own  hearts  to  be  in  harmony  with 
God's  great  world  around  us. 

And  I  know  of  few  means  that  God  has  given 
us  more  powerful  in  arriving  at  that  happy  point 


10          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

of  education  than  the  books  which    we    read. 
^  Books !  what  a  part  they  play  in  the  life  of  the 
'  intelligent  man !    They  influence  our  morals,  they 
tinge   our   character,  they  stimulate   our   ambi- 
tions ;  they  frame,  and  they  color  our  whole  life's 
great  picture. 

Have  you  not  marked  it,  how  the  book  of  the 
boy  becomes  the  guide  of  the  youth,  the  com- 
panion of  the  man,  the  friend  and  consolation  of 
old  age?  It  is  a  grand  thing  when  you  are 
growing  old,  when  the  burdens  of  many  years  are 
bending  down  your  shoulders,  and  the  snows  of 
many  winters  have  whitened  your  hair,  when 
you  sit  alone,  and  yet  you  are  not  alone — when 
you  are  surrounded  by  the  ghosts  of  the  mighty 
dead.  And  sitting  in  your  library,  leaning  back 
in  your  chair,  you  may  shake  hands  with  the 
old  friends  of  your  childhood — the  authors  on 
the  shelves.  They  never  leave  you;  they  stay 
with  you  when  every  other  memory  of  a  long 
and  eventful  life  seems  like  the  vapory  figures 
of  a  dream  that  has  long  since  passed. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  first  great  book  was 
written  by  the  hand  of  God — written  in  letters 
of  light  across  the  scroll  of  chaos.  It  was  a 
wondrous  book;  it  was  God's  book  to  man,  the 
great  book  of  nature,  that  wondrous  world  that 
was  to  unfold  before  us  page  by  page  and  chap- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          11 

ter  by  chapter,  wherein  the  hand  of  the  Eternal 
God  had  written  the  laws  and  the  lessons  and 
the  mysteries  and  the  wonders  and  the  beauties 
that  would  bind  the  human  soul  for  ever  to  the 
great  white  throne  of  God. 

And  in  order  that  man  might  read  that  book 
of  nature,  and  reading  it  aright  might  find  there- 
in the  mystery  of  his  being,  God  gave  to  every 
man  a  wondrous  mind — an  almost  divine  intellect 
— That  as  that  book  of  nature  unfolds  before  him 
he  might  read  aright  the  lessons  that  are  writ- 
ten there. 

But  when  man  sinned — when  man  stood  up 
twixt  heaven  and  earth  and  hurled  back  in  the 
face  of  the  great  Creator  his  pledge  of  love  and 
immortality — in  that  instant  the  God-like  mind 
was  darkened.  Sin  heaped  up  and  repeated 
through  generation  after  generation,  dwarfed 
the  body,  weakened  the  physical  structure,  and 
dragged  man  down  to  almost  the  level  of  brute- 
life.  The  God-like  mind  was  still  there,  but  all 
in  a  chaos  of  confusion.  The  splendid  intellect 
was  buried  within,  but  could  not  manifest  itself 
through  this  sin-abused  and  much  debased  body. 
Man  was  buried  in  material  things,  seeking  his 
happiness  in  the  world,  and  he  could  not  reach 
to,  nor  grasp,  nor  read  aright  the  supernatural 


12          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

lessons  that  the  hand  of  God  had  written  all 
o'er  that  book  of  nature. 

And  for  a  little  while  it  seemed  as  though 
God's  work  was  lost.  For  a  little  while  it  seemed 
as  though  that  book  of  nature  had  become  a 
book  of  cipher  that  man  would  never  read  aright, 
a  book  of  wonders  that  man  could  never  under- 
stand. 

But  to  a  few  gifted  minds,  to  a  few  men  of 
genius,  God  seems  to  have  given  the  key  to  that 
wondrous  book  of  nature,  that  as  it  unfolds 
before  them  page  by  page  and  chapter  by  chap- 
ter, with  the  light  of  genius  given  them  by 
heaven,  they  may  read  aright  the  lessons  that 
are  written  there,  and  put  them  into  language 
that  you  and  I  can  understand. 

We  call  these  great  minds,  we  call  these  men 
of  genius,  authors.  We  love  them,  friends,  and 
why?  We  love  them  most  of  all  because  they 
take  up  that  great  book  of  nature,  that  work  of 
God,  and  turning  o'er  its  pages  they  find  the 
mysteries  that  are  hidden  there,  and  translate 
them  into  language  that  the  sons  and  daughters 
of  men  can  understand. 

They  lie  out  in  the  summer  time  under  the 
beautiful  green  trees,  they  listen  to  the  love 
songs  of  the  birds,  and  in  the  love  songs  of 
the  birds  there  is  whispered  to  the  soul  of  genius 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          13 

something  more  than  sweet  music,  something 
more  than  trembling  tones.  In  the  love  songs 
of  the  birds  there  is  whispered  to  the  soul  of 
genius  something  of  the  mysterious  anthems  that 
angels  sing  around  the  throne  of  God. 

They  lie  down  by  the  babbling  brooks,  they 
listen  to  the  silvery  waters  rippling  in  soft  mu- 
sic o'er  the  white  pebbles  as  they  march  onward 
to  their  beds  in  the  lakes.  And  in  the  murmur 
of  the  waters,  in  its  rippling  and  its  roar,  there 
is  something  more  than  rushing  water — it  is  the 
voice  of  Divinity  whispering  of  the  mysterious 
powers  that  the  hand  of  the  Creator  has  buried 
away  down  deep  in  the  bosom  of  mother  nature. 

They  pause — these  men  of  gifted  minds — 
pause  o'er  the  tiny  flowers  that  you  and  I  would 
pass  thoughtlessly  by,  and  looking  down  into 
their  soft,  velvety  petaled  hearts  the  soul  of 
genius  sees  something  more  than  the  pretty 
flowers,  something  more  than  the  splendid  shape, 
something  more  than  the  marvellous  coloring: 
Out  of  the  heart  of  the  beautiful  flower  a  soul 
steals  forth  that  whispers  to  genius  the  mysteries 
of  life  and  death. 

Amongst  such  authors  Shakespeare  stands 
alone.  He  seems  to  occupy  an  unique  position 
not  only  in  the  language  and  the  literature  of 
our  own  tongue,  but,  for  that  matter,  in  the 


14          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

language  and  the  literature  of  the  world.  He 
differs  e'en  from  the  greatest  authors.  Why, 
e'en  the  greatest  authors,  as  I  read  them,  study 
them,  and  analyze  them  attentively,  I  feel,  in- 
deed, with  that  mighty  genius  given  them  by 
Heaven,  they  have  read  that  great  book  of  nature 
as  it  unfolded  before  them,  they  have  drunk 
in  her  wonders  and  her  mysteries  and  her  laws 
and  her  beauties,  and  then  out  of  their  own 
minds  they  want  to  imitate  God.  They  would 
create — build  up  marvellous  characters;  wonder- 
ful indeed,  but  they  are  man-made.  And  when 
they  have  built  up  their  little  characters,  into 
their  mouths  they  put  set  phrases  and  analyzed 
sentences.  Shakespeare  differs  from  all  this. 

We  can  seldom  say,  truly,  that  Shakespeare 
creates.  With  a  master  hand  he  draws  back  the 
curtain  from  the  stage  of  life  and  shows  us  men 
and  women,  not  the  creatures  of  his  brain,  but 
God's  men  and  women — men  and  women  as  we 
know  them  in  everyday  life.  He  puts  into  their 
mouths  no  set  phrases,  no  analyzed  sentences,  but 
coming  down  to  the  footlights,  the  men  and 
women  of  Shakespeare  speak  forth  their  hearts 
and  their  souls  to  us. 

E'en  the  greatest  authors,  as  I  read  them  I 
seem  to  feel,  with  their  mighty  genius,  they  have 
grasped  the  world  of  nature  as  it  flew  on  before 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          15 

them,  that  they  have  become  so  enraptured  with 
a  single  page  of  the  book  of  life,  so  lost  in  the 
study  of  a  single  human  joy  or  a  single  human 
passion,  that  they  spend  their  whole  lives  in 
translating  one  little  page  of  God's  great  work, 
in  giving  expression  to  a  single  soul's  joy  or  a 
single  heart's  yearning. 

And  so  the  danger  to  a  man  of  one  book,  or 
of  one  author,  is  that  he  will  judge  God's  whole 
world  from  the  coloring  of  his  favorite  book, 
or  from  the  standpoint  of  his  favorite  author. 

These  men  of  gifted  minds  delve  down  into 
the  very  bosom  of  mother  earth ;  they  felch  forth 
the  heart-drops  of  humanity;  they  crystalize 
them  into  beautiful  literary  gems,  set  them  in 
wonderful  settings,  and  send  them  forth  for  the 
admiration  of  the  world. 

Again,  Shakespeare  differs  from  all  this.  He 
never  translates  in  part,  he  never  delves  down, 
nor  digs,  nor  seems  to  seek  for  his  material. 
With  the  genius  of  a  master  he  holds  the  mirror 
up  to  nature  and  gives  us  a  reflex,  not  of  one 
page,  not  of  a  part,  but  of  God's  whole  great 
scheme  of  existence — every  human  joy  and  every 
human  passion  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 

He  is  the  one  author  that,  as  I  read  him,  I  feel, 
with  a  yearning  of  a  genius  he  has  thrown  his 
arms  out  to  the  world,  he  has  grasped  the  hand 


16          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

of  humanity,  and  he  has  counted  the  pulse  of 
the  human  race.  He  is  the  one  author  who  seems 
to  have  thrown  himself  prone  down  on  the  bosom 
of  mother  nature  and  listened  until  he  has  caught 
the  heart-throbs  of  humanity. 

It  is  this  very  massiveness,  this  very  complete- 
ness of  Shakespeare,  which  has  made  his  work 
even  like  the  book  of  nature — :a  book  of  cipher — 
that  men  cannot  read  aright ;  a  book  of  wonders 
that  men  study  all  their  lives,  and  dying  admit 
that  they  know  little  or  nothing  of  the  wonders 
or  the  mysteries  or  the  beauties  that  are  buried 
away  in  that  matchless  work. 

It  is  this  very  massiveness — this  very  com- 
pleteness of  Shakespeare — which  has  caused  the 
greatest  critics  in  our  language,  after  years  of 
study,  to  conclude  that,  after  all,  the  work  is 
too  gigantic,  too  complete  for  any  one  mind  to 
have  conceived,  or  any  one  hand  to  have  fin- 
ished in  detail,  but,  after  all,  many  minds  and 
many  hands  were  engaged  upon  the  master- 
work. 

Why,  even  the  lovers  of  Shakespeare  are 
forced  reluctantly  to  admit  that  at  least  two 
minds  and  two  hands  are  evident  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  work.  And  the  question  ever  recur- 
ring is  "why?"  Why  do  you  believe  that  you 
can  distinguish  the  evidence  of  different  minds 


SERMONS  FROM  SPIAKESPEARE.       i? 

and  different  hands  in  the  structure  of  the 
work?  You  will  see  clearly  in  a  moment's  con- 
sideration. 

When  Shakespeare  speaks  of  the  unknowable 
world,  when  he  would  inculcate  a  great  moral 
principle,  when  he  speaks  of  the  supernatural  he 
rises  to  the  dignity  of  the  sublime. 

He  is  indeed,  then,  the  divine  poet.  But,  as 
every  student  of  Shakespeare  will  remember,  in 
the  details  of  his  work,  in  finishing  scenes,  and 
closing  acts,  and  frequently  in  his  comedy,  he 
falls  below  the  standard  of  the  mere  mediocre; 
and  why?  Because  Shakespeare  cared  little  or 
nothing  for  laws  or  words  or  technique. 

And  it  is  this  very  masterly  disregard  for  law 
and  usage  that  has  caused  him  to  incorporate 
into  the  very  body  of  his  matchless  composition 
these  glaring  grammatical  English  mistakes, 
which,  since  his  time,  have  become  master-pieces 
of  English  expression. 

We  study  the  words  of  Shakespeare,  and  yet 
the  words  of  Shakespeare  were  but  the  tools  of 
his  craft,  which  he  used  as  he  saw  fit.  Words 
were  but  the  material  with  which  he  would  build 
up  a  great  temple  of  literary  thought,  and  where 
the  word  did  not  fit  he  cut  it  off  or  elongated  its 
meaning  that  it  might  fill  in  the  space  for  which 
he  designed  it/  Words  were  but  vehicles  to  carry 


18          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

his  thoughts  on  down  through  the  annals  of  time. 

As  he  sat  there  and  spun  out  the  matchless 
music  of  his  verse,  verse  was  neither  his  end 
nor  his  object.  As  he  sat  there  and  spun  out 
the  matchless  music  of  his  verse^he  was  merely 
weaving  a  garment  with  which  he  would  clothe 
the  child  of  his  soul  and  send  her  forth  for  the 
admiration  of  men. 

The  truth  is  Shakespeare,  with  that  wondrous 
genius  given  him  by  Heaven,  has  read  the  great 
book  of  nature  as  it  unfolded  before  him.  Like 
thousands  of  other  authors  he  has  drunk  in  her 
wonders  and  her  beauties  and  her  mysteries.  But, 
then,  from  that  book  of  nature  he  has  turned  to 
the  written  book  of  God — the  inspired  scrip- 
ture— the  scripture  which  is  so  evident  in  the 
structure  of  his  work.  It  forms  the  very  bone- 
work — the  skeleton  of  his  master-concepts — and 
he  finds  therein  the  same  wonders,  the  same 
mysteries,  the  same  heart-aches,  the  same  death- 
pangs,  the  same  soul  yearnings  of  the  human 
race  that  he  finds  all  around  him  in  God's  great 
book  of  nature.  And  taking  from  that  written 
book  a  text  he  sat  down,  not  to  write  mere  plays 
to  while  away  the  hours,  not  mere  poems  to  sat- 
isfy a  vulgar  rabble,  but  to  give  to  the  world 
some  of  the  greatest  sermons  ever  conceived  by 

-' 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          19 

a  human  mind  or  executed  by  a  merely  human 
hand. 

At  first  glance  it  may  seem  this  is  an  odd 
view  to  take  of  Shakespeare.  At  first  glance 
it  may  appear  as  an  unique  treatment  of  the 
Mighty  Bard,  but  in  order  to  appreciate  the  full 
motive  and  value  of  his  work  we  must  realize 
that  it  was  written  for  people  of  the  world — 
for  men  and  women  of  mature  minds  and  mature  •/" 
knowledge.  Hence,  the  many  delicate  questions 
touched  are  not  to  be  viewed  as  opening  up  for- 
bidden grounds  to  immature  minds,  but  rather 
assisting  developed  intellects  to  better  under- 
stand the  forces  operating  to  make  human  life 
what  it  is.  For  unless  you  so  study  Shakespeare, 
unless  you  seek  the  ideal  in  his  work,  unless  you 
judge  him  strictly  from  the  standpoint  of  art, 
many  of  his  compositions  which  have  for  years 
been  accepted  as  master-pieces,  when  judged 
strictly  from  the  standpoint  of  technique,  will 
sink  below  the  level  of  the  mere  mediocre.  On 
the  other  hand  many  of  his  works  that  have  been 
thrown  aside  by  the  critics  as  second  rate  pro- 
ductions, as  mere  bids  to  the  vulgar  rabble, 
studied  in  the  light  of  art  will  be  raised  to  the 
dignity  of  master-pieces. 

If  we  would  ever  understand  the  true  meaning, 
or  properly  appreciate  the  work  of  genius  we 


20          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

must  be  able  to  distinguish  in  literature,  as  in- 
deed we  do  in  all  the  other  works  of  man,  the 
difference  between  mere  manufactory  and  real 
art.  Let  us  just  for  a  moment  consider  this 
point — manufactory.  I  care  not  in  what  depart- 
ment of  man's  work;  I  care  not  how  beautifully 
it  is  done;  I  care  not  how  wonderfully  it  is  con- 
trived; I  care  not  how  exquisitely  executed, 
manufactory  is  always  the  work  of  the  human 
hand.  It  caters  to  the  present  time,  to  the  age 
and  the  place  in  which  it  is  manufactured.  It 
caters  to  the  styles  of  the  day  and  the  fads  of  the 
hour,  and  it  will  be  thrown  aside  or  be  forgotten 
as  time  rolls  on  and  the  styles  change  and  the 
fads  are  forgotten.  But  art  never  dies;  it  is 
immortal.  It  belongs  to  no  time,  no  place,  or  no 
people;  it  lives  for  ever,  and  why?  Because 
art  is  a  child  of  the  human  soul ;  it  is  an  outcome 
of  the  human  intellect.  It  caters  to  no  time,  no 
place,  or  no  people.  It  is  universal.  It  lives 
for  ever  because  it  embodies  the  grand  ideals  of 
the  human  soul.  They  will  not  die.  They  will 
live  on  for  ever — as  long  as  the  human  intellect 
yearns  after  or  seeks  divinity. 

Would  you  then  know  the  beauty  of  Shakes- 
peare? Would  you  ever  understand  the  inner 
meaning  of  his  matchless  verse  you  must  study 
him  as  art.  You  must  seek  the  presence  of  the 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          21 

ideal  in  his  work;  you  must  find  the  soul,  that 
underlying  principle,  that  irresistible  power  that 
forced  his  genius  to  build  up  these  literary  struc- 
tures, that  he  might  send  down  into  other  hearts 
and  other  minds  the  grand  ideals  of  his  own 
soul. 

However  much  knowledge,  then,  you  may  ac- 
quire by  parsing  or  phrasing  or  tearing  asunder ; 
however  much  knowledge  may  come  to  you  from 
your  scientific  analysis,  if  you  would  ever  know 
the  beauty  of  Shakespeare  you  must  study  him 
as  art. 

The  great  mistake  of  our  English  critics,  and, 
for  that  matter,  I  might  say  the  great  mistake  of 
our  English  readers  in  general,  in  the  study  of 
Shakespeare  is  this:  you  are  so  busy  studying 
the  mere  technique,  so  enraptured  with  the  ma- 
terial structure  that  you  never  delve  down  un- 
derneath and  seek  for  the  soul.  The  great  trou- 
ble is  that  you  are  so  lost  in  the  music  of  his 
matchless  verse,  so  enraptured  with  the  mere  ma- 
terial structure  that  you  have  never  grasped  the 
soul,  never  identified  the  immortal  principle  that 
rolls  on  from  play  to  play  and  from  poem  tc 
poem,  identifying  each  great  work,  not  merely 
as  a  work  of  art,  but,  as  it  were,  giving  to  each 
great  concept  the  stamp  of  a  family  resemblance, 
identifying  each  master-work  as  a  child  of  that 


22          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

divine  genius,  with  the  mighty  Master  as  the 
Father  of  them  all. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  great  mistake  of  our 
English  critics,  again  let  me  say  it,  the  great 
mistake  of  our  English  readers  in  general  in  the 
study  of  literature  is  this :  you  insist  upon  using 
the  method  of  a  scientist  in  the  study  of  an  art. 
Now  science,  as  we  all  know,  pulls  down,  tears 
asunder  in  order  that  it  may  find  the  grain  of 
truth  or  beauty  that  is  buried  within.  But  art 
differs  from  all  this.  Art  builds  up ;  art  frames ; 
art  forms;  art  colors  in  order  that  truth  and 
beauty  may  stand  before  us  a  living  and  lasting 
reality. 

Without  truth  and  beauty  exemplified  there  is 
no  real  work  of  art.  No  hand  of  man  has  ever 
given  birth  to  art.  (  The  hand  is  but  the  instru- 
ment that  moulds  into  imperishable  form  the 
creations  of  the  intelligent  soul.  To  make  this 
clear  let  us  take,  then,  an  example.  Take  for 
instance  Julius  Caesar,  the  great  tragedy  of 
Roman  life.  Let  us  ask  ourselves  the  question, 
"Is  Julius  Caesar  a  work  of  art?  Is  it  a  mas- 
ter-piece?" Now,  before  we  can  answer  this 
question  intelligently  we  must  call  back  to  our 
minds  what  we  understand  when  an  intelligent 
man  speaks  of  art.  Art  is  that  which  elevates, 
which  refines,  is  it  not?  Art  is  that  which  ap- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          23 

peals  to  the  better  elements  in  a  man ;  art  is  that 
which  stimulates  the  intellect;  art  is  the  sensi- 
ble expression  of  the  ideal. 

Now,  from  this  standpoint  is  Julius  Caesar 
art?  As  it  is  studied  in  the  schools  today  is  Jul- 
ius Caesar  a  master-piece?  Is  there  anything  in 
Julius  Caesar  that  will  elevate  or  refine?  Is 
there  anything  in  Julius  Caesar  that  appeals  t( 
the  better  elements  in  a  man?  Is  there  anything 
in  Julius  Caesar  that  stimulates  the  intellect? 
Where  is  the  ideal?  It  is  all  blood  and  greed 
and  avarice  and  hate.  There  is  not  a  single  ray 
of  light  from  the  opening  to  the  closing  of  the 
play.  The  truth  is  if  Julius  Caesar  were  writ- 
ten today,  without  the  name  of  the  Immortal 
Bard  before  it,  the  play  would  not  be  admitted 
a  work  of  art.  Today,  analyzed  and  parsed, 
judged  strictly  from  the  standpoint  of  English 
composition,  Julius  Caesar  would  be  classed  with 
such  works  as  Hall  Caine's  Deemster.  We  would 
call  it  the  child  of  a  diseased  brain,  the  outcome 
of  a  morbid  imagination. 

But,  perhaps  you  will  say,  Julius  Caesar  is  an 
historic  drama,  and  we  must  expect  the  bloody 
atmosphere  of  that  historic  period.  My  dear 
people,  this  is  the  very  thought  in  my  own  mind. 
But  is  Julius  Caesar  historic?  Is  the  play  of 
Julius  Caesar  an  historic  play?  If  I  were  to 


24          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

admit,  with  the  average  critic  or  reader  of 
Shakespeare,  that  the  play  of  Julius  Caesar  is 
intended  as  an  historic  picture  of  Rome,  then 
I  would  feel  myself  forced  to  call  Shakespeare 
a  bungler  in  his  craft.  He  has  distorted  time  and 
place  and  incident.  He  has  destroyed  the  historic 
character  of  Caesar,  and  for  what?  Would  he 
teach  us  history  by  destroying  and  distorting 
what  little  we  know  of  that  historic  period  ?  The 
truth  is  the  play  of  Julius  Caesar  will  not  stand 
the  test  of  an  historic  analysis.  There  must  be, 
then,  lying  beyond  that  splendid  technique,  hid- 
'den  within  these  master-lines,  there  must  be  a 
central  thought,  a  single  motive  which  has 
escaped  our  readers  and  our  critics  in  their  his- 
toric analysis  of  the  work. 

It  seems  to  me  the  whole  secret  lies  in  this: 
The  work  of  Shakespeare  is  today  universally 
admitted  as  literature.  Well,  if  you  admit  that 
the  work  of  Shakespeare  is  literature,  I  shall  ask, 
"is  not  literature  an  art?"  It  is  the  great  art  of 
arts.  Then,  why  do  you  not  study  it  as  an  art? 
Is  it  not  strange  that  our  English  students  today 
insist  upon  using  one  method  in  the  study  of  lit- 
erature and  an  entirely  different  method  in  the 
study  of  the  other  arts?  Why  do  you  not  study 
literature  as  you  study  architecture,  as  you  study 
sculpture,  as  you  study  painting?  The  author, 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          25 

instead  of  using  canvas  or  color  and  brush,  uses 
words — living,  vivified  words — in  order  that  he 
may  impress  upon  your  very  soul  the  picture  of 
his  own  mind.  Now,  if  this  picture,  instead  of 
being  merely  impressed  upon  your  mind  in 
words,  were  painted  on  canvas  how  would  you 
study  it  now?  Take,  for  example,  a  great  art- 
ist who  has  just  finished  his  master-piece,  and  he 
wishes  to  disclose  it  for  your  admiration  or  your 
condemnation.  Will  the  great  painter  put  the 
picture  low  down  on  the  floor,  so  that  each  one  ^ 
may  come  up  and  study  the  technique,  see  every 
trick  of  his  art,  and  the  stroke  of  his  brush,  and 
the  bunching  of  coloring,  and  the  texture  of  the 
canvas  ?  Oh,  no !  Any  artist  who  would  fol- 
low this  method  in  disclosing  his  work  to  the 
world  would  never  be  recognized  as  a  master, 
for  having  studied  the  picture  in  detail  your  mind 
would  be  blurred  with  the  technique — you  would 
never  feel  the  spirit,  the  soul  of  the  composition. 
No,  when  a  great  artist  has  finished  his  master- 
piece and  he  wishes  to  disclose  it  for  the  intelli- 
gent judgment  of  the  world,  he  hangs  the  pic- 
ture high  on  the  wall,  he  cunningly  shades  the 
light,  so  that  it  strikes  the  central  figure,  and 
then  he  asks  you  to  stand  far  back — not  where  ^ 
you  may  study  the  picture  in  detail,  but  where 
the  whole  composition  bursts  upon  you  as  a  unit, 


26          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

where  the  background  throws  out  the  central 
figure  into  bold  relief,  and  there  in  the  central 
figure  you  catch  the  ideal,  the  key  to  the  whole 
mental  picture.  Now,  as  you  stand  there  gazing 
upon  the  silent  picture,  out  of  the  silent  can- 
vas you  read  the  master-story.  Just  in  like 
manner  when  you  read  a  great  play,  a  splendid 
poem,  a  mighty  story  you  should  be  able  to  close 
your  eyes  and  find  impressed  upon  your  soul  a 
master-picture ;  and  that  picture  within  your  soul, 
that  is  the  very  picture  that  was  in  the  mind  of 
genius  that  forced  him  to  build  up  his  literary 
structure  that  he  might  send  that  picture  down 
into  other  hearts  and  other  minds. 

And  therefore  I  feel  that  the  first  steps  in  the 
study  of  literature  must  be  the  study  of  the  men- 
tal picture,  instead  of  the  analysis  of  the  empty 
shell  which  has  carried  the  picture  down  to  us. 
When  we  understand  the  picture,  when  the  soul 
of  the  composition  has  touched  our  own,  then 
the  analysis  of  the  mere  material  structure  will 
become  a  labor  of  love. 

Now  you  have  read  your  Shakespeare,  you 
have  analyzed,  you  have  parsed  and  phrased. 
I  beg  of  you  to  throw  aside  your  scientific  analy- 
sis, and  let  us  for  once  study  Shakespeare  from 
the  standpoint  of  art,  as  a  mighty  word  painter 
of  mental  pictures. 


Julius!  Caegar 

Let  us  take  first  the  great  tragedy,  Julius  Cae- 
sar. The  popular  impression  of  this  great  acting 
play  is  that  it  was  written  and  presented  to  the 
public  as  an  historic  drama.  The  truth  or  fal- 
lacy of  this  estimate  of  the  play  must  be  cleared 
up  before  we  can  thoroughly  appreciate  its 
beauty  or  its  true  meaning. 

I  believe  all  doubt  as  to  the  intention  of  the 
author  may  be  cleared  up  in  regard  to  this  play, 
and,  for  that  matter,  in  regard  to  any  other  well 
constructed  drama,  by  adhering  closely  to  the  old 
classical  laws  of  dramatic  construction. 

A  play,  like  any  other  work  of  art,  cannot  be 
constructed  at  haphazard.  The  material  form 
must  preserve  the  unity,  the  conciseness  or  the 
clearness  of  the  mental  impression,  otherwise  the 
mental  picture  will  be  lost  in  a  labyrinth  of  the 
material.  Therefore,  in  the  writing  of  a  drama 
five  acts  are  considered  necessary  to  harmon- 
iously work  out  the  theme.  Shakespeare  has 
carefully  adhered  to  this  classical  law,  and  in 
order  that  the  five  acts  may  be  properly  bal- 
anced each  act  has  its  function  in  unfolding  the 
story  of  the  play. 

The  function  of  the  first  act  is  the  presentation 


28          SERMONS  FROM  SPIAKESPEARE. 

of  the  theme,  and  the  introduction  of  the  heart- 
•  fyji  interest,  as  no  drama  can  be  called  a  work  of  art 
unless  it  has  a  defined  theme  and  appeals  to  the 
heart  as  well  as  to  the  intellect.  This  accom- 
plished, the  first  act  should  close. 

The  function  of  the  second  act  is  the  introduc- 
ing of  the  dramatic  incident — that  is,  the  pre- 
senting of  a  conflict  between  two  principles,  good 
and  evil.  This  is  what  makes  the  composition  a 
drama.  This  dramatic  incident  thoroughly  es- 
tablished, the  second  act  should  close. 

The  function  of  the  third  act  should  be  the 
development  or  working  out  of  this  dramatic 
conflict.  And  it  is  in  the  third  act  that  the  most 
liberty  is  given  to  the  author. 

The  fourth  act  brings  the  climax  or  dramatic 
action — the  poetic  retribution. 

And  the  fifth  act  is  merely  the  denouement, 
or  equalization,  restoring  the  picture  to  the  har- 
mony of  the  first  act. 

With  these  laws  it  becomes  clear  to  any  mind 
that  if  Julius  Caesar  were  intended  by  the  author 
to  be  an  historic  work  we  must  find  the  historic 
theme  in  the  first  act,  for  the  function  of  the 
first  act  is  the  unfolding  of  the  theme  and  the 
introduction  of  the  heart-interest.  But  we  seek 
in  vain  in  the  first  act  of  Julius  Caesar  for  an 
historic  incident.  We  find  a  picture  of  discon- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          29 

tent.  We  find  jealousy  and  hatred  and  distrac- 
tion in  unexpected  places.  We  find  the  supersti- 
tions of  paganism  brought  forth  most  vividly. 
We  find  the  feast  of  the  Lupercal  as  a  reflection 
of  pagan  Rome.  We  find  the  heart-interest  in 
the  love  of  Caesar's  wife,  and  in  spite  of  our- 
selves we  become  interested  in  Caesar — this  puny, 
infirm  god  of  the  Romans. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  since  no  historic  inci- 
dent is  enunciated  in  the  first  act,  that  Shakes- 
peare did  not  intend  an  historic  treatment  of  the 
play.  Had  the  assassination  of  Caesar  been  in- 
troduced in  the  first  act,  then,  indeed,  we  could 
no  longer  question  the  intention  of  the  author  to 
produce  an  historic  picture,  for  he  would  be 
obliged  in  the  four  following  acts  to  develop 
the  historic  theme  which  he  presented  for  our 
consideration  in  the  first  act. 

I  am  sure,  therefore,  that  we  will  be  able 
to  catch  the  true  meaning  of  Shakespeare  more 
quickly,  and  more  clearly,  if  we  study  the  play 
as  a  great  word  painting.  In  order  to  do  this 
we  must  construct  our  picture.  Take  first  the 
background.  But  where  will  we  find  the  back- 
ground? If  you  were  painting  this  picture  of 
Julius  Caesar  where  would  you  find  the  back- 
ground? My  dear  friends,  you  will  always  find 
the  background  of  a  literary  picture  in  the  open- 


30          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

ing  scenes  of  a  play  or  in  the  opening  chapters  of 
a  book.  What  I  call  the  background  of  a  pic- 
ture is,  after  all,  simply  what  you  call  the  at- 
mosphere of  a  literary  composition.  The  author 
must  create  his  atmosphere  before  he  can  intro- 
duce the  characters  who  are  to  live  in  that  at- 
mosphere. Hence,  the  background  of  the  picture 
of  Julius  Caesar  rolls  out  before  us  like  a  great 
panorama  in  the  opening  scenes  of  the  play.  It 
is  Rome,  pagan  Rome ;  Rome  the  mistress  of  the 
world,  with  all  the  arts,  and  all  the  sciences,  and 
all  the  wealth,  and  all  the  culture  of  the  world 
concentrated  to  and  centered  in  Rome ;  and  Rome 
is  rolling  in  her  luxury  and  power.  Every  na- 
tion is  lying  at  her  feet;  every  people!  pay  her 
tribute.  The  imperial  foot  of  Rome  is  on  the 
neck  of  the  civilized  world.  And  imperial  Rome 
in  an  hour  of  pride  and  of  greed  stoops  down 
into  the  gutter,  picks  up  a  little  man  of  clay — 
one  of  her  own  sons — raises  him  up,  puts  him  on 
a  pedestal,  drapes  him  with  the  imperial  purple, 
and  Caesar  is  a  god;  and  Rome,  that  demands 
the  homage  of  the  world,  bows  down  before  this 
little  god  of  clay.  They  put  his  statues  in  the 
public  squares;  the  statues  are  draped  with  the 
national  colors;  the  laurel  wreath  is  placed  upon 
his  brow ;  women  and  children  shower  down 
flowers  and  perfume  as  the  Divine  Caesar  passes 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          31 

by.  They  strew  their  garments  in  the  dust  that 
the  imperial  Caesar  may  tread  upon  them.  Cae- 
sar is  a  god,  and  Rome,  that  demands  the  hom- 
age of  the  world,  bows  down  before  the  little 
god  that  she  herself  has  made.  See !  he  stands  in 
the  very  center  of  the  picture;  he  dominates 
every  line  in  the  play.  Out  of  his  own  mouth 
you  get  the  key  to  the  whole  picture.  He  says : 

"I  could  be  well  moved,  if  I  were  as  you; 

If  I  could  pray  to  move,  prayers  would  move  me : 

But  I  am  constant  as  the  northern  star, 

Of  whose  true-fix'd  and  resting  quality 

There  is  no  fellow  in  the  firmament. 

The  skies  are  painted  with  unnumber'd  sparks; 

They  are  all  fire  and  every  one  doth  shine ; 

But  there's  but  one  in  all  doth  hold  his  place: 

So  in  the  world ;  'tis  furnish'd  well  with  men, 

And  men  are  flesh  and  blood,  and  apprehensive; 

Yet  in  the  number  I  do  know  but  one 

That  unassailable  holds  on  his  rank, 

Unshaked  of  motion :     and  that  I  am  he, 

Let  me  a  little  show  it,  even  in  this ; 

That  I  was  constant  Cimber  should  be  banish'd, 

And  constant  do  remain  to  keep  him  so." 

No  sooner  have  you  heard  this  blasphemy 
from  the  mouth  of  this  little  shivering  man  of 
rlay  saying  he  is  a  god — he  is  like  the  northern 


32          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

star,  immovable — than  the  very  hand  that  has 
made  him  a  god  reaches  up  and  catches  the  hem 
of  his  garment,  and  drags  him  down.  There's 
your  pagan  god,  a  handful  of  bleeding  clay,  and 
around  him  stand  the  foremost  men  of  Rome — 
the  very  men  who  yesterday  swore  by  the  divine 
name  of  imperial  Caesar — there  they  stand  today 
with  their  bloody  hands  and  their  dripping  dag- 
gers. And  as  they  stand — see !  the  motive  of  the 
play  unfolds!  There  enters  the  slave  of  An- 
tony— Antony  who  hung  upon  the  neck  of  this 
Roman  god — Antony  who  was  more  to  Caesar 
than  a  son  or  a  brother.  But  no  sooner  has  this 
fickle  pagan  world  dragged  down  her  god  than 
Antony  sends  his  slave.  Is  it  for  revenge  ?  No ; 
to  beg,  to  cringe,  to  plead  that  he  may  have  a 
part  in  the  new  world,  that  he  may  come  on  the 
stage  in  the  new  drama  of  life,  and  with  his 
cap  and  bells  play  the  fool  to  the  new  god — 
to  the  new  god  this  pagan  world  may  rear  up — 
and  it  is  only  when  he  is  assured  of  his  own  per- 
sonal safety;  it  is  only  when  he  knows  that  his 
own  miserable  body  is  freed  from  the  hand  of 
the  assassin,  that  Antony  dares  to  come  out  from 
his  own  home.  Yesterday  he  was  master,  today 
he  must  rush  through  the  streets  of  Rome  to 
save  himself  from  bodily  harm.  And  as  he 
rushes  along,  at  the  very  door  of  the  senate 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          33 

house  he  is   stopped  by  the  bleeding  body   of 

Caesar,  the  god.     Oh!  it  is  no  set  phrases,  no 

analyzed  sentences;  but  spontaneously  bubbling   j 

forth  from  the  bursting  heart  of  Antony  comes 

that  splendid  sermon  on  the  vanity  of  a  world 

without  a  God. 

"O  mighty  Caesar!  dost  thou  lie  so  low? 

Are  all  thy  conquests,  glories,  triumphs,  spoils, 

Shrunk  to  this  little  measure?    Fare  thee  well. 

(And  he  leaves  the  dead  to  seek  the  living) 
I  know  not,  gentlemen,  what  you  intend, 
Who  else  must  be  let  blood,  who  else  in  rank : 
If  I  myself,  there  is  no  hour  so  fit 
As   Caesar's   death's   hour,   nor   no   instrument 
Of  half  that  worth  as  those  your  swords,  made 

rich 

With  the  most  noble  blood  of  all  this  world. 
I  do  beseech  ye,  if  you  bear  me  hard, 
Now,  whilst  your  purpled  hands  do  reek  and 

smoke, 

Fulfil  your  pleasure.     Live  a  thousand  years, 
I  shall  not  find  myself  so  apt  to  die: 
No  place  will  please  me  so,  no  mean  of  death, 
As  here  by  Caesar,  and  by  you  cut  off, 
The  choice  and  master  spirits  of  this  age." 

Then  Brutus  speaks: 
"O  Antony,  beg  not  your  death  of  us. 
Though  now  we  must  appear  bloody  and  cruel, 


34          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

As,  by  our  hands  and  this  our  present  act, 
You  see  we  do;  yet  see  you  but  our  hands 
And  this  the  bleeding  business  they  have  done : 
Our  hearts  you  see  not ;  they  are  pitiful ; 
And  pity  to  the  general  wrong  of  Rome — 
As  fire  drives  out  fire,  so  pity  pity, — 
Hath  done  this  deed  on  Caesar."    (Antony  easily 
appeased,  answers) 

" I  doubt  not  of  your  wisdom. 

Let  each  man  render  me  his  bloody  hand: 
First,  Marcus  Brutus,  will  I  shake  with  you; 
Next,  Caius  Cassius,  do  I  take  your  hand; 
Now,  Decius  Brutus,  yours;  now  yours,  Metel- 

lus; 

Yours,  Cinna,  and,  my  valiant  Casca,  yours; 
Though  last,  not  least  in  love,  yours,  good  Tre- 

bonius. 

Gentlemen  all, — alas,  what  shall  I  say? 
My  credit  now  stands  on  such  slippery  ground, 
That  one  of  two  bad  ways  you  must  conceit  me, 
Either   a   coward   or   a   flatterer.      (Seeing  the 
upturned  face  of  Caesar  his  better  nature  over- 
comes him) 

That  I  did  love  thee,  Caesar,  O,  'tis  true: 
If  then  thy  spirit  look  upon  us  now, 
Shall  it  not  grieve  thee  dearer  than  thy  death, 
To  see  thy  Antony  making  his  peace, 
Shaking  the  bloody  fingers  of  thy  foes, 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          35 

Most  noble!  in  the  presence  of  thy  corpse? 
Had  I  as  many  eyes  as  thou  hast  wounds, 
Weeping  as  fast  as  they  stream  forth  thy  blood, 
It  would  become  me  better  than  to  close 
In  terms  of  friendship  with  thine  enemies. 
Pardon  me,  Julius!     Here  wast  thou  bay'd  bra 

hart; 

Here  didst  thou  fall,  and  here  thy  hunters  stand, 
Sign'd  in  thy  spoil  and  crimson'd  in  thy  lethe. 
O  world,  thou  wast  the  forest  to  this  hart ; 
And  this,  indeed,  O  world,  the  heart  of  thee. 
How  like  a  deer  striken  by  many  princes 
Does  thou  here  lie !" 

(But  self  conquers,  and  again  the  politician 

speaks) 

"Pardon  me,  Caius  Cassius : 
The  enemies  of  Caesar  shall  say  this ; 
Then,  in  a  friend,  it  is  cold  modesty." 

(Then  Cassius  speaks) 
"I  blame  you  not  for  praising  Caesar  so; 
But  what  compact  mean  you  to  have  with  us? 
Will  you  be  prick'd  in  number  of  our  friends, 
Or  shall  we  on,  and  not  depend  on  you?" 

"Therefore  I  took  your  hands,  but  was 

indeed 
Sway'd  from  the    point    by    looking    down    on 

Caesar. 
Friends  am  I  with  you  all  and  love  you  all, 


36          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Upon  this  hope  that  you  shall  give  me  reasons 
Why  and  wherein  Caesar  was  dangerous." 

(And  then  alone  with  Caesar) 

"O,  pardon  me,  thou  bleeding  piece  of  earth, 
That  I  am  meek  and  gentle  with  these  butchers  I 
Thou  art  the  ruins  of  the  noblest  man 
That  ever  lived  in  the  tide  of  times. 
Woe  to  the  hand  that  shed  this  costly  blood ! 
Over  thy  wounds  now  do  I  prophesy, 
Which  like  dumb  mouths  do  ope  their  ruby  lips 
To  beg  the  voice  and  utterance  of  my  tongue, 
A  curse  shall  light  upon  the  limbs  of  men ; 
Domestic  fury  and  fierce  civil  strife 
Shall  cumber  all  the  part  of  Italy ; 
Blood  and  destruction  shall  be  so  in  use, 
And  dreadful  objects  so  familiar, 
That  mothers  shall  but  smile  when  they  behold 
Their  infants  quarter'd  with  the  hands  of  war ; 
All  pity  choked  with  custom  of  fell  deeds : 
And  Caesar's  spirit  ranging  for  revenge, 
With  Ate  by  his  side  come  hot  from  hell, 
Shall  in  these  confines  with  a  monarch's  voice 
Cry  'Havoc,'  and  let  slip  the  dogs  of  war; 
That  this  foul  deed  shall  smell  above  the  earth 
With  carrion  men,  groaning  for  burial." 

This  is  your  picture.  It  is  not  the  literary 
structure ;  it  is  the  dramatic  picture  of  blood  and 
greed  and  avarice  and  hate.  Caesar  is  a  god,  and 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          37 

they  drag  him  down.  Brutus  makes  his  own 
moral  law.  Antony  justifies  his  own  ends.  There 
is  no  law ;  there  is  no  morality ;  there  is  no  God. 
Each  man  strives  and  grasps  for  his  own.  It  is 
the  picture  of  a  world  without  a  God. 

Now  we  see  why  Shakespeare  has  painted  a 
puny,  egotistical  fatalist,  tinged  with  all  the 
superstitions  of  paganism,  instead  of  the  mighty 
Caesar  of  history.  Caesar  is  presented  to  us,  not 
as  the  mere  historic  personage,  but  as  paganism 
personified,  and  he  falls  in  ruin,  leaving  desola- 
tion on  all  sides. 

This  idea  of  Shakespeare  seems  to  be  carried 
out  in  the  four  great  characters  of  the  play.  He 
presents  to  us  in  no  instance  the  historic  person- 
ages known  by  their  respective  names  used  in 
the  play.  We  have  four  characters  upon  which 
the  play  moves — Caesar,  Cassius,  Brutus  and 
Antony;  and  Shakespeare  has  carefully  drawn, 
in  these  four  characters,  four  types  of  paganism 
as  clearly  and  as  distinctly  as  it  is  possible  to 
embody  a  type  in  an  individual.  He  has  given 
us  the  four  great  ages  of  Rome  in  his  four  great 
characters.  Cassius  "is  the  Roman  barbarian; 
honest,  sincere,  self-reliant,  with  the  spirit  of 
battle  and  war.  He  worships  physical  power 
and  physical  strength;  he  sneers  at  Caesar  be- 
cause of  his  infirm  body  and  his  puny  constitu- 


38          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

tion ;  he  glories  in  his  own  physical  strength  and 

superiority  as  a  soldier.    His  is  the  spirit  of  the 

Roman  barbarians    who   conquered     the    world. 

This    is    clearly    exemplified    in    his    one    great 

speech : 

"I  know  that  virtue  to  be  in  you,  Brutus, 

As  well  as  I  do  know  your  outward  favour. 

Well,  honour  is  the  subject  of  my  story. 

I  cannot  tell  what  you  and  other  men 

Think  of  this  life,  but,  for  my  single  self, 

I  had  as  lief  not  be  as  live  to  be 

In  awe  of  such  a  thing  as  I  myself. 

I  was  born  free  as  Caesar ;  so  were  you : 

We  both  have  fed  as  well,  and  we  can  both 

Endure  the  winter's  cold  as  well  as  he: 

For  once,  upon  a  raw  and  gusty  day, 

The  troubled  Tiber  chafing  with  her  shores, 

Caesar  said  to  me  'Barest  thou,  Cassius,  now 

Leap  in  with  me  into  this  angry  flood, 

And  swim  to  yonder  point?'    Upon  my  word, 

Accoutred  as  I  was,  I  plunged  in 

And  bade  him  follow:     so  indeed  he  did. 

The  torrent  roar'd,  and  we  did  buffet  it 

With  lusty  sinews,  throwing  it  aside 

And  stemming  it  with  hearts  of  controversy ; 

But  ere  we  could  arrive  the  point  proposed, 

Caesar  cried,  'Help  me,  Cassius,  or  I  sink !' 

I,  as  Aeneas  our  great  ancestor 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          39 

Did  from  the  flames  of  Troy  upon  his  shoulder 
The  old  Anchises  bear,  so  from  the  waves  of 

Tiber 

Did  I  the  tired  Caesar:  and  this  man 
Is  now  become  a  god,  and  Cassius  is 
A  wretched  creature,  and  must  bend  his  body 
If  Caesar  carelessly  but  nod  on  him. 
He  had  a  fever  when  he  was  in  Spain, 
And  when  the  fit  was  on  him,  I  did  mark 
How  he  did  shake:     'tis  true,  this  god  did 

shake ; 

His  coward  lips  did  from  their  colour  fly, 
And  that  same  eye  whose  bend  doth  awe  the 

world 

Did  lose  his  lustre :    I  did  hear  him  groan : 
Ay,    and   that   tongue   of   his   that   bade   the 

Romans 
Mark  him  and  write  his   speeches    in    their 

books, 

Alas,  it  cried,  'Give  me  some  drink,  Titinius/ 
As  a  sick  girl.    Ye  gods !  it  doth  amaze  me 
A  man  of  such  feeble  temper  should 
So  get  the  start  of  the  majestic  world 

And  bear  the  palm  alone" 

"Why,  man,  he  doth  bestride  the  narrow  world 
Like  a  Colossus,  and  we  petty  men 
Walk  under  his  huge  legs  and  peep  about 
To  find  ourselves  dishonourable  graves. 


40          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Men  at  some  time  are  masters  of  their  fates : 
The  fault,  dear  Brutus,  is  not  in  our  stars, 
But  in  ourselves,  that  we  are  underlings. 
Brutus,  and  Caesar:  what  should  be  in  that 

Caesar  ? 
Why  should  that  name  be  sounded  more  than 

yours  ? 

Write  them  together,  yours  is  as  fair  a  name; 
Sound   them,   it  doth   become   the   mouth   as 

well; 

Weigh  them,  it  is  as  heavy;  conjure  with  'em, 
Brutus  will  start  a  spirit  as  soon  as  Caesar. 
Now,  in  the  names  of  all  the  gods  at  once, 
Upon  what  meat  doth  this  our  Caesar  feed, 
That   he   is   grown   so   great?     Age,   thou   art 

shamed ! 

Rome,  thou  hast  lost  the  breed  of  noble  bloods! 
When  went  there  by  an  age,  since  the  great 

flood, 
But  it  was  famed  with  more  than  with  one 

man? 
When  could  they  say  till  now  that  talk'd  of 

Rome 

That  her  wide  walls  encompass'd  but  one  man  ? 
Now  is  it  Rome  indeed,  and  room  enough, 
When  there  is  in  it  but  one  only  man. 
O,  you  and  I  have  heard  our  fathers  say 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          41 

There  was   a   Brutus  once  that   would   have 

brook'd 

The  eternal  devil  to  keep  his  state  in  Rome 
As  easily  as  a  king." 

He  is  the  one  honest  character  in  the  play.    He 
is  jealous  of  Caesar;  he  admits  it  in  his  own 
mind,  but  justifies  his  jealousy  in  his  own  fitness 
and  Caesar's  physical  inferiority.     He  says: 
"Well,  Brutus,  thou  art  noble;  yet,  I  see, 
Thy  honourable  metal  may  be  wrought 
From  that  it  is  disposed :    Therefore,  it  is  meet 
That  noble  minds  keep  ever  with  their  likes; 
For  who  so  firm  that  cannot  be  seduced  ? 
Caesar  doth  bear  me  hard ;  but  he  loves  Brutus: 
If  I  were  Brutus  now  and  he  were  Cassius, 
He  should  not  humour  me.     I  will  this  night, 
In  several  hands,  in  at  his  windows  throw, 
As  if  they  came  from  several  citizens, 
Writings,  all  tending  to  the  great  opinion 
That   Rome   holds    of    his    name,     wherein 

obscurely 

Caesar's  ambition  shall  be  glanced  at: 
And  after  this  let  Caesar  seat  him  sure ; 
For  we  will  shake  him,  or  worse  days  endure." 
Cassius  is  the  barbarian.     He  uses  craft,  but 
knows  it,  and  is  honest  with  himself.    Brutus  is 
the  Greco-Roman,  who  has  borrowed  the  philos- 
ophy and  the  literature  of  Greece;  the  Roman 


42          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

satiated  with  conquests,  and  with  the  Greek  phil- 
osophy and  eastern  training,  feels  himself  a 
superior  sort  of  creature.  Like  the  sophistry  of 
his  philosophy,  he  is  false  to  the  core,  not  even 
honest  with  himself.  With  his  false  philosophy 
he  would  drug  his  own  soul  into  peaceful  slum- 
ber. 

Had  Shakespeare  devoted  an  entire  play  to  the 
development  of  the  character  of  Brutus  alone 
he  could  not  have  more  strongly  accentuated  the 
falseness  of  the  man,  the  danger  of  a  character 
nourished  and  upheld  by  false  philosophy,  than 
he  has  disclosed  in  the  one  soliloquy,  where  Bru- 
tus, speaking  to  his  own  soul,  judges  his  dearest 
friend. 

"It  must  be  by  his  death:  and,  for  my  part, 
I  know.no  personal  cause  to  spurn  at  him, 
But  for  the  general.     He  would  be  crown'd: 
How  that  might  change  his  nature,  there's  the 

question : 

(It  is  not  the  fact,  but  the  speculative  question 
that  he  would  judge) 

It   is   the  bright   day   that   brings   forth   the 

adder ; 
And  that  craves  wary  walking.     Crown  him? 

—that;— 

And  then,  I  grant,  we  put  a  sting  in  him, 
That  at  his  will  he  may  do  danger  with. 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          43 

The  abuse  of  greatness  is  when  it  disjoins 
Remorse  from  power:  and,  to  speak  truth  of 

Caesar, 

I  have  not  known  when  his  affections  sway'd 
More  than  his  reason.     But  'tis    a    common 

proof, 

That  lowliness  is  young  ambition's  ladder, 
Whereto  the  climber-upward  turns  his  face ; 
But  when  he  once  attains  the  upmost  round, 
He  then  unto  the  ladder  turns  his  back, 
Looks  in  the  clouds,  scorning  the  base  degrees 
By  which  he  did  ascend:    So  Caesar  may;  (So 
might  any  man;  even  the  honourable  Brutus) 
Then,  lest  he  may,  prevent.     And,  since  the 

quarrel 

Will  bear  no  colour  for  the  thing  he  is, 
Fashion  it  thus ;  that  what  he  is,  augmented, 
Would  run  to  these  and  these  extremities: 
And  therefore  think  him  as  a  serpent's  egg 
Which  hatch'd  would  as  his  kind  grow  mis- 
chievous, 

And  kill  him  in  the  shell." 
In  all  the  literature  of  the  English  tongue,  I 
doubt  that  such  another  hellish  bit  of  reasoning 
can  be  found.  Were  you  to  try  your  own  mother 
by  this  method  of  reasoning  you  must  make  her 
an  unnamable  thing. 

Perhaps  the  most  artistic  touch  which  Shakes- 


44          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

peare  has  given  in  this  drama,  is  where  he  makes 
this  Brutus, — the  man  of  literature,  the  scholar — 
open  his  sentence  with  relative  pronoun  it  with- 
out an  antecedent.  "It  must  be  by  his  death." 
What  is  this  it?  Brutus  dares  not  mention,  even 
to  his  own  soul,  the  antecedent  of  that  it.  "It 
must  be  by  his  death."  Brutus,  the  noble  Brutus, 
shrinks  from  putting  into  words  the  thought  that 
is  uppermost  in  his  mind.  We  must  supply  the 
sentence  which  Brutus  will  not  speak.  "It  must 
be."  What  is  the  advancement  of  Brutus — the 
ambition  of  Brutus — can  be  only  by  the  death  of 
Caesar.  This  character  of  Brutus  is  carried  out 
in  his  speech  to  the  Romans 

"Be  patient  till  the  last. 

"Romans,  countrymen,  and  lovers!  hear  me 
for  my  cause,  and  be  silent,  that  you  may  hear: 
believe  me  for  mine  honour,  and  have  respect  to 
mine  honour,  that  you  may  believe :  Censure  me 
in  your  wisdom,  and  awake  your  senses,  that  you 
may  the  better  judge.  If  there  be  any  in  this 
assembly,  any  dear  friend  of  Caesar's,  to  him 
I  say  that  Brutus'  love  to  Caesar  was  no  less 
than  his.  If  then  that  friend  demand  why  Bru- 
tus rose  against  Caesar,  this  is  my  answer:  not 
that  I  loved  Caesar  less,  but  that  I  loved  Rome 
more.  Had  you  rather  Caesar  were  dead,  to 
live  all  freemen?  As  Caesar  loved  me,  I  weep 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          45 

for  him;  as  he  was  fortunate,  I  rejoice  at  it;  as 
he  was  valiant,  I  honour  him;  but  as  he  was 
ambitious,  I  slew  him.  There  are  tears  for  his 
love;  joy  for  his  fortune;  honour  for  his  valour; 
and  death  for  his  ambition.  Who  is  here  so  base 
that  would  be  a  bondsman?  If  any,  speak;  for 
him  have  I  offended.  Who  is  here  so  rude  that 
would  not  be  a  Roman?  If  any,  speak;  for  him 
have  I  offended.  Who  is  here  so  vile  that  will 
not  love  his  country?  If  any,  speak;  for  him 
have  I  offended.  I  pause  for  a  reply/' 

"None,  Brutus,  none." 

"Then  none  have  I  offended.  I  have  done  no 
more  to  Caesar  than  you  shall  do  to  Brutus.  The 
question  of  his  death  is  enrolled  in  the  Capitol; 
his  glory  not  extenuated,  wherein  he  was  worthy, 
nor  his  offenses  enforced,  for  which  he  suffered 
death.  Here  comes  his  body,  mourned  by  Mark 
Antony;  who,  though  he  had  no  hand  in  his 
death,  shall  receive  the  benefit  of  his  dying,  a 
place  in  the  commonwealth;  as  which  of  you 

shall  not?  with  this  I  depart, That,  as  I 

slew  my  best  lover  for  the  good  of  Rome,  I  have 
the  same  dagger  for  myself,  when  it  shall  please 
my  country  to  need  my  death." 

Carefully  framed  and  balanced,  cold  as  a  block 
of  marble,  chiseled  with  the  care  of  a  consum- 
mate master,  he  holds  up  to  the  Romans,  not 


46          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

their  wrongs,  not  Caesar's  faults,  but  the  honour, 
the  righteousness  of  Brutus.  He  is,  in  my  mind, 
the  villain  of  the  play;  the  scoundrel  who  would 
justify  all  his  actions  on  his  assumed  virtue.  He 
is  the  same  character  which  runs  through  every 
age  of  history,  which  has  been  so  conspicuous 
in  the  Christian  church;  the  character  who  has 
deluged  the  world  with  blood  for  the  honour  of 
a  merciful,  loving  God. 

It  is  worthy  of  marked  attention  that  Shakes- 
peare has,  in  Brutus  and  Cassius,  shown  us  the 
danger  of  dreamers  meddling  in  public  affairs; 
the  danger  in  men  of  practical  experience  ally- 
ing themselves  with,  or  allowing  themselves  to  be 
governed  by  theorists.  In  every  incident  of  the 
play  where  there  is  a  question  of  conflict  of 
opinion  Cassius  is  right,  Brutus  is  wrong,  and, 
still,  in  every  instance  Cassius  gives  way  to  the 
theorizing  of  Brutus. 

Perhaps  the  strongest  argument  for  the  fal- 
lacy of  Brutus  is  in  the  fact  that  the  spirit  of 
Caesar  haunts  him.  Twice  he  sees,  or  fancies  he 
sees,  the  ghost  of  Caesar.  No  one  else  sees  the 
spirit ;  it  is  only  a  figment  of  the  guilty  mind  of 
Brutus;  it  is  his  conscience  crying  out  against 
his  intellect.  Again,  the  last  words  he  utters  are 
a  confession  of  his  guilt :  "Caesar  now  be  still ; 
I  killed  not  thee  with  half  so  good  a  will."  As 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          47 

if  even  then  in  the  hour  of  his  death,  the  spirit 
of  Caesar  mocked  him. 

Caesar  is  the  triumphant  Roman,  the  ruler  of 
the  world,  the  fatalist  that  feels  himself  deified; 
while  Antony  is  the  modern  Roman,  the  diplomat, 
the  Italian  that  turns  all  things  to  his  own  pur- 
pose. If  he  were  living  today  he  would  be  a 
great  politician,  a  mighty  political  boss.  His 
speech  to  the  Romans  is  perhaps  the  best  example 
of  diplomatic  oratory  which  we  can  find  in  the 
language.  His  hatred  for  Brutus,  his  grief  for 
Caesar,  his  fidelity  to  Octavius,  never,  for  one 
instant,  makes  him  forget  the  interests  of  An- 
tony. I  believe  in  no  part  of  Shakespeare  has 
the  actor  so  sinned  against  the  spirit  of  Shakes- 
peare as  in  the  reading  of  this  speech  of  An- 
tony. 

"Friends,  Romans,  countrymen,  lend  me  your 

ears; 
I  come  to  bury  Caesar,  not  to  praise  him.  (A 

first  bid  for  the  favor  of  the  rabble) 
The  evil  that  men  do  lives  after  them ; 
The  good  is  oft  interred  with  their  bones; 
So  let  it  be  with  Caesar.    The  noble  Brutus 
Hath  told  you  Caesar  was  ambitious : 
If  it  were  so,  it  was  a  grievous  fault, 
And    grievously    hath    Caesar    answer'd    it. 
(Veiled  accusation  of  Brutus.) 


48          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Here  under  leave  of  Brutus  and  the  rest, — 

For  Brutus  is  an  honourable  man; 

So  are  they  all,  all  honourable  men. —  (More 
play  to  the  rabble.) 

Come  I  to  speak  in  Caesar's  funeral. 

He  was  my  friend,  faithful  and  just  to  me : 

But  Brutus  says  he  was  ambitious ; 

And  Brutus  is  an  honourable  man.  (Now  he 
has  gained  the  attention  of  his  hearers, 
and  before  they  realize  it  he  presents  the 
case  of  Caesar.) 

He  hath  brought  many  captives  home  to  Rome, 

Whose  ransoms  did  the  general  coffers  fill: 

Did  this  in  Caesar  seem  ambitious? 

When  that  the  poor  have  cried,  Caesar  hath 
wept: 

Ambition  should  be  made  of  sterner  stuff: 
(But  he  must  not  yet  offend  the  Brutus 
swayed  mob.  Hence) 

Yet  Brutus  says  he  was  ambitious; 

And  Brutus  is  an  honourable  man.  (Now  for 
the  clinching  of  Caesar's  case.) 

You  all  did  see  that  on  the  Lupercal 

I  thrice  presented  him  a  kingly  crown, 

Which  he  did  thrice  refuse:  was  this  ambi- 
tion? 

Yet  Brutus  says  he  was  ambitious; 

And,   sure,  he   is  an  honourable  man.      (No 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          49 

longer  veiled,  but  open  scorn) 
I  speak  not  to  disprove  what  Brutus  spoke, 
But  here  I  am  to  speak  what  I  do  know. 
You  all  did  love  him  once,  not  without  cause: 
What  cause  withholds  you  then  to  mourn  for 

him? 

O  judgment,  thou  art  fled  to  brutish  beasts, 
And  men  have  lost  their  reason.     (He  has  the 

mob  now,  and  will  play  upon  them.  Tears 

and  pathos  are  his  instruments) 

Bear  with  me; 

My  heart  is  in  the  coffin  there  with  Caesar, 
And  I  must  pause  till  it  come  back  to  me." .... 

(Low  and  pleading  now,  like 

a  mother  to  her  child) 
"But  yesterday  the  word  of  Caesar  might 
Have  stood   against  the  world;  now  lies  he 

there, 
And  none  so  poor  to  do  him  reverence. 

0  masters,  if  I  were  disposed  to  stir 
Your  hearts  and  minds  to  mutiny  and  rage, 

1  should  do  Brutus  wrong  and  Cassius  wrong 
Who,  you  all  know,  are  honourable  men. 

(Deep,  hissing  scorn) 

I  will  not  do  them  wrong;  I  rather  choose 
To  wrong  the  dead,  to  wrong  myself  and  you, 
Than  to  wrong  such  honourable  men.  (Flung 

at  the  crowd  as  a  reproach) 


50          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

But  here's  a  parchment  with  the  seal  of  Caesar ; 
I  found  it  in  his  closet ;  'tis  his  will : 
Let  but  the  commons  hear  this  testament — 
Which  pardon,  me,  I  do  not  mean  to  read — 
(Isn't  this  cleverly  timed;  just  to  the  im- 
pulse of  the  crowd?     Of  course  he  will 
read  it.    Tis  for  that  he  is  here) 
And  they  would  go  and  kiss  dead   Caesar's 

wounds 

And  dip  their  napkins  in  his  sacred  blood, 
Yea,  beg  a  hair  of  him  for  memory, 
And,  dying,  mention  it  within  their  wills, 
Bequeathing  it  as  a  rich  legacy 

Unto  their  issue." (He  must  still 

further  work  them  to  curiosity.) 
"Have  patience,  gentle  friends,  I  must  not  read 

it; 

It  is  not  meet  you  know  how  Caesar  loved  you. 
You  are  not  wood,  you  are  not  stones,  but 

men; 

And,  being  men,  hearing  the  will  of  Caesar, 
It  will  inflame  you,  it  will  make  you  mad : 
'Tis  good  you  know  not  that  you  are  his  heirs, 
(Apparently  by  accident,  but  most  cleverly 
by  design) 
For  if  you  should,  O,  what  would  come  of  it !" 


"Will  you  be  patient?    Will  you  stay  awhile? 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          51 

I  have  o'ershot  myself  to  tell  you  of  it; 

I  fear  I  wrong  the  honourable  men 

Whose  daggers  have  stabb'd  Caesar;  I  do  fear 

it." (Now  the  crowd  goes  mad, 

and  Antony  is  the  wild  fanatical  orator.) 
"You  will  compel  me  then  to  read  the  will? 
Then  make  a  ring  about  the  corpse  of  Caesar, 
And  let  me  show  you  him  that  made  the  will. 
Shall  I  descend?  and  will  you  give  me  leave?" 

"If  you  have  tears,  prepare 

to  shed  them  now. 

You  all  do  know  this  mantle:     I  remember 
The  first  time  ever  Caesar  put  it  on, 
'Twas  on  a  summer's  evening,  in  his  tent, 
The  day  he  overcame  the  Nervii : 
Look,    in    this    place    ran     Cassius'     dagger 

through : 

See  what  a  rent  the  envious  Casca  made : 
Through  this  the  well-beloved  Brutus  stabb'd; 
And  as  he  pluck'd  his  cursed  steel  away, 
Mark  how  the  blood  of  Caesar  follow'd  it, 
As  rushing  out  of  doors,  to  be  resolved 
If  Brutus,  so  unkindly  knock'd,  or  no: 
For  Brutus,  as  you  know,  was  Caesar's  angel : 
Judge,  O  you  gods,  how  dearly  Caesar  loved 

him. 

This  was  the  most  unkindest  cut  of  all ; 
For  when  the  noble  Caesar  saw  him  stab, 


52          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Ingratitude,  more  strong  than  traitors'  arms, 

Quite  vanquished  him:  then  burst  his  mighty 
heart ; 

And,  in  his  mantle  muffling  up  his  face, 

Even  at  the  base  of  Pompey's  statue, 

Which  all  the  while  ran  blood,  great  Caesar 
fell. 

O,  what  a  fall  was  there,  my  countrymen! 

Then  I,  and  you,  and  all  of  us  fell  down, 

Whilst  bloody  treason  flourish'd  over  us. 

O,  now  you  weep,  and  I  perceive  you  feel 

The  dint  of  pity :    these  are  gracious  drops. 

Kind  souls,  what  weep  you  when  you  but 
behold 

Our  Caesar's  vesture  wounded?  Look  you 
here, 

Here  is  himself,  marr'd,  as  you  see,  with  trait- 
ors."   "Good  friends,  sweet 

friends,  let  me  not  stir  you  up 

To  such  a  sudden  flood  of  mutiny. 

They  that  have  done  this  deed  are  honourable ; 

What  private  griefs  they  have,  alas,  I  know 
not, 

That  made  them  do  it:  They  are  wise  and 
honourable, 

And  will,  no  doubt,  with  reasons  answer  you. 

I  come  not,  friends,  to  steal  away  your  hearts : 

I  am  no  orator,  as  Brutus  is; 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          53 

But,  as  you  know  me  all,  a  plain  blunt  man, 
That  loved  my  friend ;  and  that  they  know  full 

well 

That  gave  me  public  leave  to  speak  of  him: 
For  I  have  neither  wit,  nor  words,  nor  worth, 
Action,  nor  utterance,  nor  the  power  of  speech, 
To  stir  men's  blood :  I  only  speak  right  on ; 
I  tell  you  that  which  you  yourselves  do  know ; 
Show  your  sweet  Caesar's  wounds,  poor  poor 

dumb  mouths, 
And  bid  them  speak  for    me;    but    were    I 

Brutus, 

And  Brutus  Antony,  there  were  an  Antony 
Would  ruffle  up  your  spirits,  and  put  a  tongue 
In  every  wound  of  Caesar,  that  should  move 
The  stones  of  Rome  to  rise  and  mutiny.". . . . 

"Why,  friends,    you  go    to    do 

you  know  not  what : 

Wherein  hath  Caesar  thus  deserved  your 

loves  ? 

Alas,  you  know  not;  I  must  tell  you  then: 
You  have  forgot  the  will  I  told  you  of." .... 

"Here  is  the  will,  and  under 

Caesar's   seal. 

To  every  Roman  citizen  he  gives, 

To  every  several  man,  seventy-five  drach- 
mas."   "Moreover,    he    hath 

left  you  all  his  walks, 


54          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

His  private  arbours,  and  new-planted  orchards, 
On  this  side  Tiber;  he  hath  left  them  you, 
And  to  your  heirs  forever ;  common  pleasures, 
To  walk  abroad  and  recreate  yourselves. 
Here  was    a  Caesar!    when   comes    such    an- 
other?"  "Now  let  it  work.    Mis- 
chief, thou  art  afoot, 
Take  thou  what  course  thou  wilt." 
The  average  actor  insists  upon  reading  this 
speech  with  much  the  same  elegance  and  polish 
with   which    Brutus   has    delivered   his   oration, 
utterly  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  Antony  was  not 
an  orator,  that  he  was  merely  one  of  the  young 
satellites  revolving  around  the    mighty    Caesar. 
They  bring  into  it  little  of  the  craftiness,  little  of 
the  trickery,  with  which  he  throws  to  the  people 
thoughts  which  they  would  not  permit  him  to 
utter  if  spoken  out  in  a  straight-forward,  manly 
fashion.    Indeed,  I  believe  that  Shakespeare,  with 
his  love  of  drajiia^ic__cjQntrast,  has  purposely  put 
these  two  speeches  so  closely  together  that  one 
may  be  a  perfect  offset  for  the  other.     Brutus' 
speech  well  prepared,  elegantly  balanced,  a  per- 
fect specimen  of  Roman  oratory.     Antony's  an 
almost  extempore  talk,  working  upon  the  pas- 
sions of  the  people  as  they  are  manifested  before 
his   very   eyes.      This    seems   evident   from   his 
words  to  the  slave  of  Octavius  Caesar: 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          55 

"Post  back  with  speed,  and  tell  him  what  hath 

chanced : 

Here  is  a  mourning  Rome,  a  dangerous  Rome, 
No  Rome  of  safety  for  Octavius  yet; 
Hie,  hence,  and  tell  him  so.    Yet  stay  awhile ; 
Thou  shalt  not  back  till  I  have  borne  this  corse 
Into  the  market-place  there  shall  I  try, 
In  my  oration,  how  the  people  take 
The  cruel  issue  of  these  bloody  men; 
According  to  the  which,  thou  shalt  discourse 
To  young  Octavius  of  the  state  of  things. 
Lend  me  your  hand." 

Had  the  crowd  sided  with  Brutus,  Antony 
would  have  followed  Brutus  as  readily  as  he 
fought  against  him;  but  seeing  his  own  inter- 
ests farthered  by  the  people,  he  used  the  body  of 
Caesar,  and  the  honour  of  Brutus,  as  a  stepping- 
stone  to  the  throne. 

It  is  a  wondrous  picture  of  a  mighty  world 
without  a  God. 

Shakespeare  has  given  us  four  examples  of 
men ;  each  one  mighty  in  his  way,  but  no  one  of 
the  four  able  to  rise  above  himself.  They  were 
products  of  paganism ;  their  gods  were  men. 
No  man  can  rise  higher  than  his  ideal.  JThe 
ideal  of  pagan  Rome  was  a  man-made  god. 
Each  man  made  his  own  little  god — an  image  of 
himself,  and  in  his  god  judged  himself. 


56          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

So  Cassius  sneered  at  all  that  was  not  physi- 
cally   perfect,    and    material    power;    Antony, 
swayed  by  his  own  selfish  desires ;  Brutus,  a  vic- 
tim of  his  false  philosophy  and  intellectual  pride 
-f- — it  is  a  picture  of  a  world  without  God. 


Masterly  as  is  his  word  picture  of  a  world 
without  a  God,  had  Shakespeare  stopped  there  I 
would  not  be  ready  to  argue  him  the  great 
genius  of  our  language.  Any  other  great  author 
that  I  know  of,  if  he  had  once  caught  the  spirit  of 
paganism,  would  have  gone  on  multiplying  pic- 
ture after  picture,  and  copy  after  copy,  until 
his  whole  life's  work  would  reek  with  the  blood 
and  the  greed  and  the  perfidy  and  the  avarice  of 
Rome.  But  herein  does  Shakespeare  show  his 
master-hand.  He  has  grasped  the  spirit  of  pa- 
ganism; he  has  painted  his  picture  of  pagan  life, 
and  with  the  yearning  of  a  genius  he  turns  the 
canvas,  and  begins  to  paint  anew — a  new  picture, 
a  new  world — and  yet — no!  as  you  look  closer, 
it  is  the  same  old  world,  but  O!  how  different. 
Years,  centuries  seem  to  have  trembled  o'er  that 
world  of  vice.  The  golden  sunlight  of  Christian- 
ity has  mounted  up  into  the  bosom  of  the  heav- 
ens, throwing  out  her  jeweled  arms  in  benedic- 
tion o'er  the  world,  and  in  spite  of  the  greed  and 
the  avarice  and  the  grossness  and  the  perfidy  of 
men,  the  whole  picture  scintillates  with  the  spirit 
of  Christ. 

J  find  this  companion  picture  of  Julius  Caesar 


58          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

in  Henry  VIII.  To  my  mind  neither  one  nor  the 
other  can  be  accepted  as  historic.  They  were 
intended  as  two  ideal  pictures.  Julius  Caesar  is 
the  world — dark,  vain,  bloody,  empty — a  picture 
/  of  the  world  without  a  God. 

Henry  VIII.,  the  same  world,  the  same  greed, 
the  same  avarice,  but  God  is  in  the  picture.  Just 
for  a  moment  study  them  together.  Take  first 
the  background  of  the  picture  of  Henry  VIII. 
It  is  the  same  background  you  found  in  Julius 
Caesar — a  world  of  hate,  a  world  of  greed,  a 
world  of  war  and  contention,  a  world  just  peep- 
ing out  of  the  barbarism  that  has  swept  down 
over  Europe.  And  this  vain  and  fickle  world  in 
an  hour  of  pride,  and  of  greed,  stoops  down  into 
the  gutter,  picks  up  a  little  shivering  man  of 
clay — one  of  her  own  sons — raises  him  up,  puts 
him  on  a  pedestal,  drapes  him  with  the  imperial 
purple,  and  Wolsey  is  a  god,  more  powerful 
than  the  king,  rich  beyond  computation, 
the  king-maker  of  his  day.  He  rules  his  little 
world  a  god.  But  see !  in  an  hour  of  pride  and 
of  lust  the  very  hand  that  made  him  a  god, 
reaches  up,  and  catches  the  hem  of  his  garment, 
and  drags  him  down,  and  there  is  your  little  god 
lying  in  the  dust. 

It  is  the  same  picture  as  Julius  Caesar;  the 
same  picture,  but  O !  how  different.  Not  an  out- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          59 

cry  for  revenge,  not  a  thirsting  for  blood,  not 
a  sentence  of  hatred:    Grander  now  in  the  hour    ^ 
of  his  degradation  than  in  all  his  princely  ele-^ 
gance  is  Wolsey,  when  his  conscience  finds  his 
God: 

"So  farewell  to  the  little  good  you  bear  me. 
Farewell!  a  long  farewell,  to  all  my  greatness! 
This  is  the  state  of  man :  today  he  puts  forth 
The  tender  leaves  of  hopes;  tomorrow  blossoms, 
And  bears  his  blushing  honours  thick  upon  him ; 
The  third  day  comes  a  frost,  a  killing  frost, 
And,  when  he  thinks,  good  easy  man,  full  surely 
His  greatness  is  a  riping,  nips  his  root, 
And  then  he  falls,  as  I  do.    I  have  ventured, 
Like  little  wanton  boys  that  swim  on  bladders, 
This  many  summers  in  a  sea  of  glory, 
But  far  beyond  my  depth:  my  high-blown  pride 
At  length  broke  under  me,  and  now  has  left  me, 
Weary  and  old  with  service,  to  the  mercy 
Of  a  rude  stream  that  must  forever  hide  me. 
Vain  pomp  and  glory  of  this  world,  I  hate  ye : 
I  feel  my  heart  new  open'd.    O,  how  wretched      ' 
Is  that  poor  man  that  hangs  on  princes'  favors! 
There  is,  betwixt  that  smile  we  would  aspire  to, 
That  sweet  aspect  of  princes,  and  their  ruin, 
More  pangs  and  fears  than  wars  of  women  have : 
And  when  he  falls,  he  falls  like  Lucifer, 
Never  to  hope  again. 


60          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Why,  how  now,  Cromwell!"     .     .     . 
.     .     .     "What,  amazed 

At  my  misfortunes?     Can  thy  spirit  wonder 
A  great  man  should  decline  ?    Nay,  and  you  weep, 
I  am  fall'n  indeed/'     .     .     . 
.     .     .     Why,  well ; 

Never  so  truly  happy,  my  good  Cromwell. 
I  know  myself  now;  and  I  feel  within  me 
A  peace  above  all  earthly  dignities, 
A  still  and  quiet  conscience.    The  king  has  cured 

me, 
I  humbly  thank  his  grace ;  and  from  these  shoul- 

ders, 

These  ruin'd  pillars,  out  of  pity,  taken 
A  load  would  sink  a  navy,  too  much  honour. 
O,  'tis  a  burden,  Cromwell,  'tis  a  burden 
Too  heavy  for  a  man  that  hopes  for  heaven!" 

.     "I  hope  I  have:    I  am  able  now,  me- 

thinks, 

Out  of  a  fortitude  of  soul  I  feel, 
To  endure  more  miseries  and  greater  far 
Than  my  weak-hearted  enemies  dare  offer. 
What  news  abroad?"    . 
.     .     .     "God  bless  him !" 
.     .     .     "That's  somewhat  sudden: 
But  he's  a  learned  man.     May  he  continue 
Long  in  his  highness'  favour,  and  do  justice 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          61 

For  truth's  sake  and  his  conscience;  that  his 
bones, 

When  he  has  run  his  course  and  sleeps  in  bless- 
ings, 

May  have  a  tomb  of  orphans'  tears  wept  on  'em ! 

What  more?"     .     .     . 

.     .     .     "That's  new  indeed."     .     .     . 

.  .  .  "There  was  the  weight  that  pull'd  me 
down.  O  Cromwell, 

The  king  has  gone  beyond  me :  all  my  glories 

In  that  one  woman  I  have  lost  forever: 

No  sun  shall  ever  usher  forth  mine  honours, 

Or  gild  again  the  noble  troops  that  waited 

Upon  my  smiles.  Go,  get  thee  from  me,  Crom- 
well; 

I  am  a  poor  fall'n  man,  unworthy  now 

To  be  thy  lord  and  master :  seek  the  king ; 

That  sun,  I  pray,  may  never  set !    I  have  told  him 

What  and  how  true  thou  art:  he  will  advance 
thee; 

Some  little  memory  of  me  will  stir  him — 

I  know  his  noble  nature — not  to  let 

Thy  hopeful  service  perish  too:  good  Crom- 
well, 

Neglect  him  not ;  make  use  now,  and  provide 

For  thine  own  future  safety." 

.  .  .  "Cromwell,  I  did  not  think  to  shed  a 
tear 


62          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

In  all  my  miseries ;  but  thou  hast  forced  me, 

Out  of  thy  honest  truth,  to  play  the  woman. 

Let's  dry  our  eyes:  and  thus  far  hear  me, 
Cromwell ; 

And,  when  I  am  forgotten,  as  I  shall  be, 

And  sleep  in  dull  cold  marble,  where  no  men- 
tion 

Of  me  more  must  be  heard  of,  say  I  taught 
thee; 

Say,  Wolsey,  that  once  trod  the  ways  of  glory, 
\  And  sounded  all  the  depths  and  shoals  of 
honor, 

Found  thee  a  way,  out  of  his  wreck,  to  rise  in ; 

A  sure  and  safe  one,  though  thy  master  miss'd 
it. 

Mark  but  mv  fall  and  that  that  ruin'd  me. 
W  '  ^^ 

Cromwell,  I  charge  thee,  fling  away  ambition ; 

By  that  sin  fell  the  angels ;  how  can  man  then, 
The  image  of  his  Maker,  hope  to  win  by  it? 
Love  thyself  last :   cherish  those  hearts  that 

hate  thee; 

Corruption  wins  not  more  than  honesty. 
Still  in  thy  right  hand  carry  gentle  peace, 
To  silence  envious  tongues.     Be  just  and  fear 

not: 

Let  all  the  ends  thou  aim's  at  be  thy  country's, 
Thy  God's,  and  truth's;  then  if  thou  fall'st,  O, 

Cromwell, 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          63 

Thou  fall'st  a  blessed  martyr!  Serve  the  king; 

And  prithee,  lead  me  in: 

There  take  an  inventory  of  all  I  have, 

To  the  last  penny ;  'tis  the  king's :  my  robe, 

And  my  integrity  to  heaven,  is  all 

I    dare    now    call    mine   own.     O,    Cromwell, 

Cromwell ! 

Had  I  but  served  my  God  with  half  the  zeal 
I  served  my  king,  he  would  not  in  mine  age 
Left  me  naked  to  mine  enemies." 

There  is  your  picture;  the  same  picture  as 
Julius  Caesar,  but  what  a  different  spirit.  In 
spite  of  the  greed,  and  the  avarice,  and  the 
lust  of  men,  the  whole  picture  scintillates  with 
the  spirit  of  Christ.  Grander  now,  in  the  hour 
of  his  helplessness,  is  Wolsey  when  his  soul 
turns  back  to  his  God. 

Friends,  this  is  the  genius  of  Shakespeare; 
this  is  the  immortal  spirit  that  cannot  die.  It 
is  not  his  splendid  lines  that  make  him  the 
master;  it  is  not  his  matchless  verse  that 
makes  him  live;  it  is  the  soul's  ambitions,  the 
heart's  yearnings,  the  highest  ideals  painted 
by  his  master-hand.  Right  here  you  may,  if 
you  wish,  catch  the  genius  of  Shakespeare — in 
Wolsey,  in  Katherine,  in  Henry,  in  Caesar, 
and  the  Romans.  Other  authors  really  create ; 


64          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

they  build  up  marvelous  characters;  men  and 
women  of  clay.  Shakespeare  creates  nothing. 
He  takes  your  breast,  or  my  heart,  and  tear- 
ing them  open  shows  a  soul — a  living  soul — 
trembling  under  the  eyes  of  God. 


's  Woman 

To  me  the  great  world  of  Shakespeare  is 
like  a  mighty  garden — a  wonderful  garden 
of  the  human  soul — where  numberless  flowers 
of  thought  bloom  in  profusion.  In  the  little 
time  that  you  and  I  may  walk  together  we 
could  not  pause  for  an  instant  o'er  each  of  the 
many  flowers  of  thought  blooming  in  this  gar- 
den of  the  mind.  At  most  we  can,  as  it  were, 
but  rush  through  the  pathways  and  the  by- 
ways of  that  garden  of  thought,  and  inhale  en 
masse  the  fragrance  of  the  flowers.  But  there 
is  one  flower  growing  in  that  garden  of 
thought  that  I  would  not  have  you  pass  un- 
noticed by — a  tall  and  stately  lily,  trembling 
on  the  stem — Shakespeare's  woman.  Woman! 
I  often  wonder  do  we  half  realize  the  real 
meaning  of  the  word.  Is  there  anything  in 
the  world  that  has  made  man  better,  that  has 
pushed  on  progress,  that  has  made  us  men 
what  we  are,  that  we  do  not  owe  to  woman. 

I  care  not  how  great  man  may  become 
through  power;  I  care  not  how  low  he  may 
sink  in  his  weakness;  I  care  not  what  honors 
the  world  may  have  showered  upon  him,  there 
is  one  word  in  our  language  that  makes  us 


66          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE, 

all  akin — that  word  is  mother.  Mother!  In 
all  the  glory  of  honors  and  riches,  in  all  the 
plaudits  that  the  world  gives  to  fame,  if  each 
and  every  man  that  has  known  greatness  were 
to  open  his  heart,  and  speak  the  truth,  he 
would  tell  you  that  when  the  burdens  of  life 
seemed  hard  to  bear,  and  the  shadows  passed 
for  a  moment  o'er  the  sun,  there  were  moments 
when  he  would  give  all  the  honors  of  the 
world,  all  the  plaudits  of  men,  for  just  five 
minutes  to  clasp  again  an  old  withered  form, 
to  hear  an  old  familiar  voice,  and  look  into  the 
time-dimmed  eyes  of  mother.  Well  has  the  poet 
said,  "the  hand  that  rocks  the  cradle  is  the 
"/"power  that  rules  the  world." 

And  where  in  God's  world  will  we  find  the 
golden  sphere  of.  woman  so  clearly  defined  as 
in  the  works  of  Shakespeare.  It  seems  to  me 
as  if  he  had  ever  before  his  mind's  eye  that  beau- 
tiful picture  in  the  golden  dawn  of  creation, 
when  Adam,  sleeping  amidst  the  flowers,  was 
awakened  by  the  voice  of  God,  and,  starting 
to  his  feet,  saw  before  him  a  beautiful  creature, 
half  human,  half  divine,  and  as  he  stood  in 
open-mouthed  wonder  looking  upon  her,  God 
took  her  hand  and  placed  it  in  his,  and  said: 
"Adam,  she  is  a  woman,  and  she  will  be  your 
helpmate,"  and  from  that  hour  man  and  worn- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          67 

an  have  gone  on  through  the  world,  hand  in 
hand,  so  different,  and  still  so  necessary  to 
one  another. 

Man  is  strong  and  bluff,  and  sometimes 
rough.  Wornan  is  gentle,  timid,  kind;  one  an 
offset  for  the  other.  Man  is  the  pioneer;  he 
goes  through  the  world  tearing  down  the 
mountains  of  opposition,  rilling  in  the  plains 
of  difficulty,  and  with  his  sturdy  stroke 
brings  down  the  mighty  oaks,  and  builds  up 
the  temples  of  civilization.  Woman  comes 
after  with  her  songs  of  love,  and  scatters  the 
beautiful  flowers,  and  smiling  angels  whisper 
home  sweet  home.  Man  is  made  up  of  conceit, 
selfishness,  conscious  power.  Woman,  forgiving, 
loving,  helpful ;  each  for  the  part  he  or  she  is  to 
play  in  the  drama  of  life. 

The  story  of  woman  as  told  in  Shakespeare 
is_a_stpry  of  love.  God  or  man,  a  woman's 
life  is  a  woman's  love.  Shakespeare  makes 
the  song  of  woman  a  melody  of  love, 
rippling  with  tones  of  affection.  She  is 
never  the  center  of  his  picture.  No;  man 
is  always  the  center  of  the  picture,  and 
woman  is  like  a  satellite  that  revolves  for- 
ever around  her  little  world,  which  is  man.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  Shakespeare  makes 
woman  the  inferior  of  man.  O,  no.  We  find 


68          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

her  there  as  we  find  her  in  the  world  of  life — 
infinitely  grander,  infinitely  superior  to  man, 
but  not  in  herself.  Woman  becomes  grand  in 
that  God-like  elevating  influence  which  she  ex- 
ercises on  the  God-creature,  man. 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  there  are  many 
women  in  Shakespeare.  It  seems  to  me  it  is 
always  the  same  woman,  but  in  a  different 
position,  under  different  circumstances,  fight- 
ing against  different  forces,  always  a  creature 
of  her  love.  God  or  man  a  woman's  love  is 
a  woman's  life. 

Is  it  a  pure  innocent  maiden  standing  on 
that  mystic  line  trembling  between  maiden- 
hood and  womanhood?  She  loves,  and  still 
she  scarcely  knows  the  meaning  of  that  word 
love.  She  has  never  dreamed  of  the  mysteries 
of  a  mother  or  a  wife.  She  meets  in  life  her 
ideal,  her  prince;  she  loves  him,  not  realizing 
the  burden  of  love;  and  still  she  will  throw 
away  home  and  friends  and  gold  and  the 
world,  and  cling,  God  only  knows  how  she 
clings,  to  the  man  she  loves.  Is  not  that 
Juliet?  Sweet  and  tender  Juliet;  only  an  in- 
nocent, trembling  child  who  has  never  learned 
the  mystery  of  life,  yet  she  lives  or  dies  with 
the  fortunes  of  her  love? 

Is  it  a  woman  older  grown?    She  has  crossed 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          69 

that  mystic  line  between  maidenhood  and 
womanhood;  she  has  met  her  affinity  in  life; 
she  has  married  and  settled  down  to  the  hum- 
drum life  of  rearing  a  family;  and  all  her  life, 
all  her  world  is  encompassed  in  the  four  walls 
of  the  home  of  the  man  she  loves.  And  all  of 
a  sudden  there  conies  a  change,  she  becomes 
a  woman  of  the  world;  she  throwis  open  the 
doors  of  her  home;  entertains  lavishly;  be- 
comes deeply  interested  in  every  public  affair. 
There  is  a  chair  vacant  in  the  affairs  of  men, 
and  there  is  only  one  man  in  God's  world  that 
can  fill  that  chair — her  man — the  man  she 
loves.  Is  not  that  Lady  Macbeth? 

Think  what  you  will  of  woman  in  the  day 
of  sunshine  or  the  hour  of  glee,  but  in  the  hour 
of  pain,  and  the  day  of  distress,  in  the  moment 
of  pressing  needs,  grander,  stronger  than  all 
the  men  in  the  world  is  the  heart  and  soul  of 
one  true,  loving  woman.  This  is  the  philoso- 
phy of  Shakespeare :  ^  One  bad  woman  can 
grasp  the  soul  of  a  man  and  drag  him  down 
until  he  stands  knocking  at  the  gates  of  hell. 
But  e'en  at  the  gates  of  hell,  a  woman  purer 
than  she  can  grasp  the  soul  of  a  man  and 
drag  him  back  again  until  she  binds  his  soul 
for  ever  to  the  great  white  throne  of  God.  J 

And  nowhere  in  the  literature  of  the  world 


70          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

will  we  find  this  golden  sphere  of  woman  so 
clearly  marked  out  as  in  Shakespeare.  We 
find  it  in  every  play  that  he  has  written.  In^ 
deed  so  strongly  was  this  power  of  woman  im- 
pressed upon  the  mind  of  Shakespeare  that  it 
has  become  the  distinguishing  mark  of  his 
work.  Indeed  so  clearly  defined  is  the  power 
of  Shakespeare's  woman  that  she  makes  his 
plays  what  they  are,  either  comedies  or  trage- 
dies. If  the  woman  be  a  bad  woman,  the  play 
is  always  a  tragedy.  If  the  woman  of  the  play 
be  a  good  woman,  it  is  always  a  comedy. 
Hence  the  philosophy  of  life:  "It  is  woman 
that  saves  or  damns  the  world."  This  is  clear- 
ly brought  out  in  A  Winter's  Tale,  where  for 
four  acts  we  are  lead  to  expect  a  tragedy,  but 
the  woman  is  a  good  woman — Hermione — 
and  Shakespeare  can  only  make  the  drama  of 
life  end  in  a  burst  of  sunshine. 

Romeo  and  Juliet  has  all  the  marks  of  a 
comedy.  There  is  no  reason  in  God's  world 
why  these  two  young,  honest,  loving  people 
should  find  life  a  tragedy.  But  Juliet  forgets 
the  sacred  dignity  of  her  womanhood ;  she  dis- 
regards the  laws  of  conventionality;  she  for- 
gets the  sacredness  of  parental  authority;  she 
is  not,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word,  a  good 
woman;  and  with  all  her  sweet  qualities  she 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          71 

reaps  the  reward  of  a  woman  who  fails — trag- 
edy and  death. 

Measure_jQr..M&asure  cries  out  for  tragedy 
in  every  line  as  the  plot  progresses,  but  Isa- 
bella, with  her  pure,  angelic  soul  draws  good 
from  all  around  her,  and  the  play  is  a  comedy. 

Desdemona,  sweet  as  an  angel,  pure  as  even 
woman  should  be;  but  she  forgets  the  sphere 
of  woman — she  seeks  man.  She  steps  down  to 
one  beneath  her;  she  defiles  her  father's  house 
with  deceit,  and  because  she  deceived  her 
father  Othello  lets  the  devil  of  jealousy  in: 
"She  deceived  her  father,  she  may  deceive  me/' 
and  tragedy  is  the  result. 


But,  perhaps,  nowhere  do  we  find  this  power 
of  woman  so  strongly  brought  forth  as  in  the 
tragedy  of  Hamlet.  Hamlet  is  diswrought; 
he  has  seen  the  ghost  of  his  father;  it  is  dis- 
closed to  him  that  his  father  is  murdered; 
that  his  uncle  is  a  traitor;  that  his  mother  is 
a  dishonored  woman.  His  brain  is  reeling, 
his  heart  is  bursting;  his  soul  yearns  for  a 
friend,  a  counsellor;  he  must  have  advice;  he 
must  confide  in  some  one.  In  this  crisis  where 
does  he  go?  Does  he  rush  back  to  the  univer- 
sity to  the  learned  professors  that  talk  philoso- 
phy and  theology,  as  if  they  knew  the  mind 
of  Deity?  No !  he  does  not  even  think  of  them. 
Where  then  does  he  seek  advice  and  consola- 
tion, in  his  soldier  friends?  He  leaves  them 
and  flees  alone  through  the  night.  Flying 
from  men  where  does  Hamlet  go?  He  does 
what  every  man  does  in  the  crisis  of  his  life, 
in  the  hour  of  need;  he  seeks  the  one  woman 
that  he  loves,  whether  it  be  the  faithful  wife, 
the  loved  mother,  or  the  trusted  sweetheart. 

Ophelia  is  alone  in  her  chamber;  she  hears  a 
commotion  without;  in  through  the  casement 
Hamlet  bursts.  His  doublet  is  open ;  his  kerchief 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          73 

torn  loose;  his  hair  flying  wildly  in  the  wind. 
Silently  he  stands,  and  gazes  upon  her  as  one 
gone  mad.  Then  rushing  across  the  room  he 
grasps  her  by  the  hands ;  he  looks  down  into  her 
great  blue  eyes  as  if  he  would  read  her  very 
soul.  Not  a  word  is  spoken;  but  it  needs  no 
words.  In  that  silent  picture  every  student  of 
human  life  will  hear  the  soul  of  Hamlet  cry  out, 
"My  mother  is  a  dishonored  woman;  Ophelia, 
will  you  be  true,  will  you  be  true."  And  Ophelia, 
poor  Ophelia,  a  mere  child,  hemmed  away  from 
the  world,  guarded  by  a  suspicious  old  father, 
without  a  mother  to  rear  her  into  womanhood; 
she  is  unformed.  She  looks  up  into  the  eyes  of 
the  man  whom  she  loves  like  a  child.  She  loves 
him!  What  does  she  know  of  love?  She  has 
never  dreamed  of  the  mysteries  of  motherhood, 
or  womanhood.  She  looks  up  into  the  eyes  of 
the  distracted  Hamlet  with  a  smile  of  love; 
but  it  is  the  love  of  a  child,  of  a  girl;  and 
Hamlet,  seeking  the  woman,  finds  only  a  child 
as  he  looks  into  her  great  blue  eyes.  And 
casting  her  from  him,  backward,  his  eyes  still  on 
her,  he  passes  out  into  the  night.  "Get  thee  to 
a  nunnery,  get  thee  to  a  nunnery,  get  thee  to  a 
nunnery."  He  realizes  that  she  is  not  ready  to 
bear  the  burdens  of  womanhood,  or  motherhood, 
or  a  wife.  He  must  bear  his  burdens  alone.  And 


74          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

broken-hearted  Hamlet  goes  out  into  the  night. 
In  the  crisis  of  his  life,  in  the  hour  of  his  need, 
the  helpmate  that  God  gave  him  is  not  ready.  Is 
not  this  the  tragedy  of  human  life?  God  help 
the  man,  when  the  world  turns  against  him,  in 
the  hour  of  need,  rushing  home  with  a  breaking 
heart  to  find  that  he  has  married  a  wife,  but  she 
is  not  a  woman — she  is  not  God's  noble  helpmate. 
Had  Ophelia  been  three  years  older  the  tragedy 
of  Hamlet  would  never  have  been  written.  Had 
Ophelia  been  three  years  older  she  would  have 
been  a  woman — a  woman  with  all  that  mysteri- 
ous strength  that  comes  to  a  woman  in  the  hour 
that  she  loves.  Had  Ophelia  been  three  years 
older,  when  Hamlet  rushed  in  upon  her,  in  the 
hour  of  his  need,  he  would  have  found  a  woman 
ready  to  share  his  burden.  She  would  have  looked 
up  into  his  eyes  with  a  glance  as  firm,  as  fearless 
as  his  own,  for  her  heart  was  pure.  She  would 
have  grasped  his  hand  with  a  grasp  as  firm  as 
his;  she  would  have  answered  with  a  fearless 
heart  of  a  woman,  "Yes,  Hamlet,  I  will  be  true. 
The  sorrows  of  your  life  for  love's  sake  I  will 
bear;  the  burdens  of  your  life  for  love's  sake  I 
will  share.  Yes,  Hamlet,  I  will  be  true."  With 
the  tender  instinct  of  a  woman  she  would  have 
brushed  back  the  hair  from  his  fevered  brow; 
she  would  have  whispered  calm  words  of  solace 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          75 

into  his  distracted  brain;  and,  with  the  better 
instinct  of  a  woman,  she  would  have  pointed 
heavenward  and  cried,  "God  is  the  avenger," 
and  Hamlet  would  have  been  saved. 

Indeed  to  me  this  is  the  whole  story  of  Ham- 
let. Not  so  much  the  story  of  the  man  as  the 
story  of  woman.  I  cannot  feel  that  the  play 
was  ever  intended  as  the  mere  narrative  of  the 
woes  of  the  individual  Hamlet,  but  rather  as  a 
great  allegory  on  human  life — man  a  puppet,  be- 
tween woman,  good  and  bad.  He  is  what  she 
makes  him,  a  great  success  or  an  awful  failure. 
So  with  Hamlet  in  the  play;  he  is  the  product 
of  two  women ;  a  good  woman,  and  a  bad  woman, 
and  the  stronger  succeeds — the  evil  queen  domi- 
nates his  life.  But  had  Ophelia  been  fully  ma- 
tured, had  she  been  a  woman  in  the  strict  sense 
of  the  word,  her  love  would  have  made  her 
stronger  than  all  the  evil  queens  in  God's  crea- 
tion, and  the  play  would  be  what  it  should  be — 
a  beautiful  comedy  with  love  dominating. 

I  have  never  been  able  to  sympathize  with 
the  question  of  Hamlet's  madness.  It  seems  to 
me  absurd  to  bring  up  the  question  at  all.  If 
the  play  is  viewed  as  an  allegory  on  life  all  men 
are  mad.  "The  number  of  fools  is  infinite. 
'Omnis  homo  mendeax  est/ "  If  viewed  as 
merely  the  narrative  of  Hamlet  the  individual, 


76          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

and  his  trials,  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that 
the  greatest  author  in  our  language  asks  intelli- 
gent people  to  sit  in  front  of  the  footlights,  and 
listen  to  the  vagaries,  or  gaze  at  the  antics  of 
a  madman.  What  could  there  be  to  the  intelli- 
gent mind,  in  the  ravings  of  a  madman,  more 
than  in  the  antics  of  a  monkey,  unless  he  be  a 
specialist  on  brain  diseases  or  a  student  of  psych- 
ology. The  truth  is  that  Hamlet,  as  presented 
by  Shakespeare,  is  predisposed  to  hysterical  ac- 
tion. He  is  by  nature  moody  and  melancholy; 
of  a  deep  poetic,  and,  at  times,  philosophical  turn 
of  mind.  He  is  inclined  to  take  himself  and  the 
world  much  too  seriously;  and  Shakespeare  has 
carefully  prepared  us  for  this  view  of  Hamlet. 
Hence  he  brings  him  home  in  the  first  act  clad 
in  mourning,  wearing  a  solemn  visage,  though 
the  court  is  full  of  merriment.  His  answers  to 
his  mother  are  more  like  the  private  utterances 
beside  the  bier  of  his  father,  than  the  public  con- 
versation of  a  court. 

"Seems,  madam!  nay,  it  is;  I  know  not  'seems.' 
'Tis  not  alone  my  inky  cloak,  good  mother, 
Nor  customary  suits  of  solemn  black, 
Nor  windy  suspiration  of  forced  breath, 
No,  nor  the  fruitful  river  in  the  eye, 
Nor  the  dejected  haviour  of  the  visage, 
Together  with  all  forms,  moods,  shapes  of  grief, 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          77 

That  can  denote  me  truly:  these  indeed  seem, 
For  they  are  actions  that  a  man  might  play : 
But  I  have  that  within  which  passeth  show; 
These  but  the  trappings  and  the  suits  of  woe." 

After  his  first  entrance  we  can  scarcely  be  sur- 
prised at  any  show  of  extreme  sentiment.  How- 
ever, the  key  note  of  Hamlet,  and  his  nature,  is 
best  discovered  by  studying  the  folk-lore  on 
ghosts  and  ghost-men. 

In  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland,  where 
Shakespeare  found  the  traditions  on  ghosts,  we 
find  that  once  a  man  sees  or  speaks  to  a  ghost  he 
is  a  marked  man — ;he  becomes  the  creature  of  the 
message  that  the  ghost  conveys.  He  is  never 
again  like  his  fellow  men;  at  least  not  until  the 
behest  of  the  ghost  is  fulfilled.  This  popular 
idea  is  carefully  carried  out  by  Shakespeare  in 
the  person  of  Hamlet.  Hamlet  acts  exactly  as 
the  popular  belief  of  England,  Ireland,  and  Scot- 
land would  have  demanded  of  him  after  having 
received  a  behest  from  a  departed  spirit.  He 
must  do  the  unexpected;  he  must  at  times  be 
entirely  controlled  by  the  supernatural  visitant. 
He  is  no  longer  merely  Hamlet,  the  Dane;  he  is 
Hamlet,  bearing  a  burden  from  the  dead;  domi- 
nated by  a  spirit;  living  in  a  dream.  And  this 
must  continue  until  he  has  fulfilled  the  behest  of 
the  spirit,  or  found  peace  in  the  grave. 


78          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

Had  Shakespeare  allowed  Hamlet  to  act  other- 
wise than  he  does  he  would  have  outraged  every 
idea  of  ghost  and  its  effects  on  human  beings  as 
then  held,  and  is  still  extant  in  the  folk-lore  of 
Ireland  and  Scotland.  However,  the  great  beauty 
of  the  piece  is  not  in  the  psychological  study  of 
the  individual,  but  rather  in  viewing  the  composi- 
tion as  a  whole — a  philosophical  treatise  on  hu- 
man life.  It  seems  to  me  to  express  thoroughly 
Shakespeare's  philosophy  of  life — the  question  of 
men  and  women,  and  their  respective  places  in 
determining  human  happiness. 


iWercftant  of 

However,  we  may  view  the  respective  merits 
of  the  various  plays  of  Shakespeare,  perhaps 
none  furnishes  a  more  interesting  study  to  the 
real  student  of  literature  than  does  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice,  or  Shylock.  Whether  we  look 
upon  it  as  a  play  with  some  deep  hidden  mean- 
ing, or  as  a  bid  for  the  applause  of  the  vulgar 
rabble;  whether  we  judge  it  as  a  meaningless 
comedy  or  a  bitter  arraignment  of  the  Jew,  the 
play  furnishes  perplexing  questions,  which  makes 
its  study  fascinating  and  mystifying. 

The  Merchant  of  Venice  is  presented  to  the 
student  in  English  literature  as  the  work  of  a 
genius.  But  no  sooner  does  he  begin  to  study 
it  according  to  rule,  to  analyze  it  according  to 
the  principles  of  dramatic  composition,  than  he 
finds  that  Shakespeare  has  violated  in  this  com- 
position almost  every  known  law  of  dramatic 
composition.  And  the  inquiring  student  is  forced 
to  join  with  many  more  learned  and  deep  critics 
in  the  opinion  that  our  mighty  genius,  Shake- 
speare, has,  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  stooped 
from  the  heights  of  his  genius,  thrown  aside  the 
models  of  his  art,  to  tickle  the  ears  of  the 
groundlings  with  fantastic  comedy,  or  cater  to 


80          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  lowest  prejudices  of  his  time  and  people, 
sacrificing  even  the  unity  of  his  composition  to 
this  ignoble  purpose,  utterly  unmindful  of  the 
fact  that  a  dramatic  genius  can  no  more  throw 
aside  the  requirements  of  dramatic  art,  to  gain 
applause  of  his  auditors,  than  could  a  gram- 
marian write  gutter  English  because  his  epistles 
were  directed  to  one  of  the  lower  strata. 

Who  argues  that  Shakespeare  prostituted  his 
art  for  public  applause  or  public  sentiment  for- 
gets the  law  that  he  himself  laid  down  for  the 
artist:  "Suit  the  action  to  the  word,  the  word 
to  the  action;  with  this  special  observance,  that 
you  o'erstep  not  the  modesty  of  nature :  for  any- 
thing so  overdone  is  from  the  purpose  of  playing, 
whose  end,  both  at  the  first  and  now,  was  and  is, 
to  hold,  as  'twere,  the  mirror  up  to  nature;  to 
show  virtue  her  own  feature,  scorn  her  own 
image,  and  the  very  age  and  body  of  the  time 
his  form  and  pressure.  Now  this  overdone  or 
come  tardy  off,  though  it  make  the  unskillful 
laugh,  cannot  but  make  the  judicious  grieve:  the 
censure  of  the  which  one  must  in  your  allow- 
ance o'erweigh  a  whole  theatre  of  others." 

It  seems  to  me  that  if  we  could  for  a  few 
moments  forget  the  critics  of  the  past,  and  with- 
out bias  or  prejudice  take  up  the  study  of  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  strictly  as  a  work  of  art, 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          81 

most,  if  not  all,  of  the  difficulties  would  disap- 
pear. 

Our  critics  tell  us  that  The  Merchant  of 
Venice,  or  Shylock,  is  a  comedy.  Some  go  still 
farther  and  say  that  it  is  a  fantastic  comedy.  It 
is  a  point  worthy  of  serious  consideration  to  any 
student  to  remember  that  not  a  single  one  of 
our  great  English  actors,  whatever  his  private 
opinion  may  have  been,  has  ever  produced  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  with  any  other  idea  than  that 
of  a  fantastic  comedy,  until  in  our  own  day  Sir 
Henry  Irving,  after  many  years  of  careful  study, 
decided  that  no  intelligent  actor  might  produce 
The  Merchant  of  Venice  as  a  comedy,  for  the 
simple  reason  (and  I  beg  you  to  notice  that  he 
has  studied  this  play  just  as  I  want  you  to  study 
English  literature)  that  Shylock,  who  is  the 
center  of  the  dramatic  picture,  does  not  speak 
a  single  comedy  line  from  the  opening  to  the 
closing  of  the  play.  It  is  evident,  then,  that 
Irving  would  judge  the  motive  of  the  entire  com- 
position from  the  central  figure  of  the  dramatic 
picture.  And  indeed  if  we  read  the  play  care- 
fully, and  without  bias,  we  will  find  that  Irving 
speaks  the  truth. 

Shylock  is  not  a  comedy  character,  nor  is  there 
any  comedy  in  his  lines,  nor  in  his  make-up.  It 
is  true  we  laugh  at  him — at  his  mannerisms,  at 


82          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  intonations  of  his  speeches,  but  never  at  his 
lines.  His  lines  are  tragic;  they  reek  of  blood, 
they  smell  of  the  fumes  of  the  infernal.  Indeed 
the  more  closely  we  study  the  play  the  more  we 
are  convinced  that  the  whole  composition  is  built 
upon  the  plan  of  a  tragedy  instead  of  the  outlines 
of  comedy.  Heinrich  Heine  dwells  particularly 
upon  this  point.  He  says:  "The  Merchant  of 
Venice  is  undoubtedly  built  upon  the  plan  of  a 
tragedy,  nevertheless  Shakespeare  intended  it  as 
a  comedy." 

Now  could  you  think  of  a  more  thorough  im- 
peachment of  the  genius  of  Shakespeare,  than 
this  estimate  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  To 
say  that  Shakespeare,  our  great  genius,  tried  to 
write  a  comedy,  but  really  left  us  a  tragedy,  at 
least  in  form.  Indeed,  it  is  said  that  when  Hein- 
rich Heine  first  saw  the  play  in  England,  he 
could  not  remain  in  his  chair,  but  passed  back 
and  forth  within  the  precincts  of  his  box.  In  the 
fourth  act,  when  Shylock,  shuffling  off  the  stage, 
cries  out,  "I  pray  thee,  let  me  go  from  hence.  I 
am. not  well,"  a  young  English  woman,  sitting 
down  in  one  of  the  stalls,  began  to  weep,  and, 
speaking  aloud  to  her  companion,  said,  "The  ould 
man  is  grieved,  the  ould  man  is  grieved."  And 
completely  forgetting  himself,  Heine  cried  out 
to  the  audience,  "This  is  not  a  comedy,  this  is  a 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          83 

tragedy."  And  this  statement,  forced  from  Heine 
in  an  unguarded  moment,  has  been  voiced  by 
many  an  intelligent  reader  of  Shakespeare,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  he  finds  himself  at  variance 
with  most  of  the  accepted  critics  and  commenta- 
tors. 

The  whole  trouble  is  that  our  English  critics 
have  been  making  blunders  generation  after  gen- 
eration in  the  estimate  of  authors  and  their 
works,  because  they  have  never  studied  literature 
as_an_art.  Our  English  critic  has  never  had  before 
his  mind's  eye  a  criterion  of  art,  by  which  he 
would  judge  each  literary  composition  as  a  single 
mental  impression.  He  has  analyzed  it,  he  has 
parsed  it,  he  has  torn  asunder,  and  in  the  pro- 
cess of  dissection  the  soul  of  literature  has  ex- 
caped. 

No  wonder,  then,  studying  The  Merchant  of 
Venice  in  lines  and  sentences  and  speeches,  the 
English  critic  tells  us  that  it  is  a  patchwork — 
several  stories  patched  together  merely  to  amuse 
the  rabble.  Had  our  critics  studied  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  as  a  work  of  art,  as  it  should 
be  studied ;  had  they  put  Shylock  in  the  center  of 
the  picture,  and  studied  each  character  in  its 
relation  to  Shylock,  they  might  have  discovered 
in  the  unity  of  art,  that  instead  of  a  patchwork, 
The  Merchant  of  Venice  is  a  magnificent  literary 


84          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

mosaic,  made  up,  it  is  true,  of  several  different 
parts,  each  story  like  a  beautifully  colored  stone, 
so  splendidly  dove-tailed  and  hair-lined  to  its 
fellow,  in  order  to  bring  out  the  central  thought 
that  runs  like  a  golden  thread  through  the  fabric 
of  the  several  different  stories  of  the  play. 

The  truth  is,  studied  as  a  work  of  art,  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  is  neither  a  comedy  nor  a 
tragedy.  It  is  a  grand  satire  on  professed  Chris- 
tianity without  the  spirit  of  Christ.  To  me  the 
play  is  a  mighty  protest  against  the  Christian 
bigots  that  professed  the  faith  of  Christ  and  then 
tore  out  the  hearts  of  their  brothers  in  the  name 
of  the  Christ  that  died  for  all  men.  To  me  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  is  a  magnificent  satire,  a 
stinging  protest  on  the  Christian  bigots  who,  in- 
sead  of  raising  men  to  the  dignity  of  sons  of 
God,  have  debased  them  below  the  level  of  brute- 
life.  It  is  an  outcry  against  the  Christian  society 
that  instead  of  producing  saints  has  produced 
that  devil,  that  immoral  wretch,  that  pervert, 
that  monstrosity  that  stands  there  in  the  center 
of  the  picture  and  dominates  every  line  of  the 
play. 

At  first  glance  this  seems  like  a  startling  decla- 
ration, and  the  only  way  to  determine  the  value 
of  this  opinion  is  to  systematically  study  the  work 
from  the  standpoint  of  art.  It  would  be  useless 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          85 

to  express  any  opinion,  or  try  to  form  any  esti- 
mate of  this  work,  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  or 
for  that  matter,  of  any  other  work  of  art,  with- 
out first  determining  what  was  the  moti£of 
the  author  in  the  building  up  and  the  perfecting 
of  the  work,  for  on  this  rests  the  whole  question 
of  his  success  or  his  failure.  What  was  he  trying 
to  do?  What  did  he  wish  to  accomplish?  If  he 
has  accomplished  his  motif  in  a  credible  manner, 
then  his  work  is  a  successful  work ;  it  has  con- 
veyed the  idea  of  the  author.  Inasmuch  as  he 
may  have  failed  to  accomplish  the  object  on 
which  he  started  out,  in  that  much  is  his  work 
a  failure. 

Our  first  step,  then,  must  be  to  determine  what 
was  the  object  of  Shakespeare  in  the  writing  of 
the  play  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  How  will  we 
determine  this?  As  there  have  been  so  many 
conflicting  systems  and  haphazard  methods  of 
studying  literature,  perhaps  the  quickest  way  to 
arrive  at  a  true  opinion  would  be  to  forget  that 
we  are  studying  merely  a  work  of  literature, 
and  keep  in  mind,  strictly,  that  we  are  studying 
a  work  of  art. 

There  is  a  unity  in  art  that  makes  all  arts  one. 
The  musician  is  enraptured  with  the  harmony 
of  color  in  the  work  of  a  painter;  the  painter  is 
enthralled  with  the  unity  of  a  work  in  literature ; 


86          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  poet  finds  his  soul  expressed  in  the  rhythmic 
beat  of  a  musical  composition.  Hence  if  you 
find  difficulty  in  one  of  the  arts  the  surest  method 
for  its  solution  is  to  call  in  the  other  arts  to  aid 
in  clarifying  the  obscurity.  This  is  exactly  what 
I  would  ask  you  to  do  in  studying  The  Merchant 
of  Venice.  We  wish  to  determine  what  was  the 
object  of  Shakespeare  in  the  writing  of  the  play. 
Now,  if  this  were  a  musical  composition  instead 
of  a  work  in  literature,  what  is  the  first  step  that 
a  student  would  take?  Any  musician  will  tell 
you  that  he  first  determines  what  is  the  motif  of 
the  composition,  and  then  according  to  the  de- 
velopment, to  the  variation ;  according  to  the  dif- 
ferentiation of  the  motif  or  theme  does  he  deter- 
mine whether  or  no  the  composition  is  a  work 
of  art  or  a  meaningless  jumble  of  sounds. 

Let  us  follow  this  method  with  The  Merchant 
of  Venice.  What  is  the  theme  or  the  motif  of 
this  composition ; — that  is,  what  is  the  thread  that 
runs  continuously  from  beginning  to  end, 
throughout  the  composition?  Some  readers  of 
Shakespeare  claim  that  the  theme  of  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  is  the  story  of  Antonio,  the  mer- 
chant. This,  indeed,  the  name  suggests,  for  An- 
tonio is  unquestionably  the  merchant  of  Venice. 
But  if  Shakespeare  intended  Antonio  to  be  the 
theme  of  the  composition,  the  play  must  end  in 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          87 

the  fourth  act,  for  the  story  of  Antonio  ends 
there,  and  his  appearance  in  the  last  act  has  no 
bearing  whatever  on  the  action  of  the  piece.  In- 
deed his  presence  in  the  last  act  seems  uncalled 
for,  as  Portia  and  Bassanio  dominate  the  scene. 
It  seems  scarcely  possible  that  a  great  genius 
would  take  as  his  central  theme  a  story  ending 
in  vital  interest  in  the  fourth  act  and  prop  up 
the  last  act  with  a  secondary  story  in  order  to 
hold  us  to  the  curtain.  This  is  exactly  why  so 
many  critics  call  the  play  a  second  rate  produc- 
tion, and  argue  that  Shakespeare  was  catering  to 
the  crowd  instead  of  the  critics,  or  the  learned 
few. 

Other  students,  finding  this  difficulty,  have 
avoided  it  by  claiming  that  while  Antonio  is  an 
important  factor  in  the  play,  the  real  story  or 
theme  of  the  composition  is  the  love  story  of 
Portia  and  Bassanio.  But  if  the  love  story  of 
Portia  and  Bassanio  is  the  theme  of  the  play, 
then  The  Merchant  of  Venice  is  a  misnomer. 
We  can  scarcely  believe  that  the  great  genius 
would  start  to  tell  the  love  story  of  Portia  and 
Bassanio  and  then  deliberately  give  it  a  name 
that  would  carry  the  mind  of  the  reader  off  the 
main  story.  Not  only  this  difficulty,  but  a  greater 
one  presents  itself.  If  the  love  story  of  Portia 
and  Bassanio  is  really  the  object  of  the  play,  why, 


88          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

then,  would  Shakespeare,  or  any  other  author 
of  experience,  introduce  a  second  love  story, — 
that  of  Jessica  and  Lorenzo,  which  for  whole 
scenes  o'ershadows  the  story  of  Portia  and  Bas- 
sanio?  This  would  seem  like  working  to  cross 
purposes,  and  striving  to  ruin  the  interest  in  his 
own  drama.  I  cannot  believe  that  any,  man  who 
knew  the  first  law  of  dramatic  construction  would 
make  such  a  blunder  as  to  divert  the  attention 
of  his  audience  from  the  main  theme. 

With  these  difficulties  before  their  eyes  many 
students — particularly  the  students  of  our  age — 
have  determined  that  the  play,  the  real  central 
figure,  is  Shylock.  But  if  the  story  of  Shylock 
is  the  object  or  the  theme  of  the  composition, 
then,  again,  The  Merchant  of  Venice  is  a  mis- 
nomer, and,  again,  a  greater  obstacle — the  play 
must  unquestionably  end  in  the  fourth  act,  for 
Shylock  does  not  even  appear  in  the  last  act. 
This  would  seem  to  leave  us  practically  without 
a  theme,  and  indeed  as  long  as  we  stick  to  the 
idea  of  individuals  we  will  find  no  theme  in  The 
Merchant  of  Venice. 

I  said  in  my  introduction  to  this  work  that  in 
the  study  of  art  we  must  keep  in  mind  that  art 
presents  not  the  individual,  but  the  type,  and  it 
is  from  the  light  of  this  principle  that  we  will  find 
the  theme  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice — not  an 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          89 

individual,  but  a  type.  Neither  Shylock,  nor  An- 
tonio, nor  Bassanio,  nor  Portia  as  individuals, 
but  each  and  all  of  them  as  types  form  the  theme 
of  The  Merchant  of  Venice.  You  will  see  clearly 
what  I  mean  if  you  will  form  in  your  mind's  eye 
a  picture  of  the  play. 

Shylock  and  Antonio  dominate  the  stage,  and 
their  spirit  permeates  every  line.  Around  them 
are  grouped  the  various  characters — different 
groups  in  the  same  picture ;  each  group  animated 
and  moved  by  the  spirit  of  the  two  central  figures 
— Shylock  and  Antonio.  Neither  Shylock  nor 
Antonio  as  individuals  form  the  theme  of  the 
play.  The  real  theme  developed  and  differentiated 
in  the  movement  of  the  composition  is  that  spirit 
of  bigotry  that  binds  Antonio  and  Shylock  to- 
gether, and  still,  forever  keeps  them  apart. 

The  theme  of  the  play,  then,  is  bigotry — hatred 
from  religion  or  so-called  religion.  You  will 
notice  that  this  spirit  of  bigotry  is  what  makes  the 
unity  of  the  composition.  Bigotry  it  is  that 
makes  the  relation  between  Shylock  and  An- 
tonio ;  bigotry  it  is  that  dominates  the  love  story 
of  Jessica  and  Lorenzo ;  bigotry  it  is  that  enters 
into  the  love  story  of  Portia  and  Bassanio,  and 
makes  Bassanio  a  raving,  rabbid  Jew-hunter. 
While  Portia,  freed  from  the  taint,  pleads  like 


90          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

a  sister  of  the  Christ  for  the  down-trodden  and 
despised  Jew. 

That  the  play  is  intended  as  a  satire  on  pro- 
fessed Christianity  without  the  spirit  of  Christ 
becomes  more  evident  the  longer  and  the  more 
closely  we  study  it  as  a  great  word  picture.  Shy- 
lock  and  Antonio  form  the  center  of  the  mental 
picture.  They  dominate  the  stage  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  play  to  the  end  of  the  fourth  act, 
and  the  fifth  act  is  simply  added  as  a  seal  to  the 
sneer  at  the  followers  of  Christ,  who,  all  unmind- 
ful of  the  sufferings  of  the  old  Jew,  receive  his 
daughter  joyously  into  their  company. 

Neither  the  story  of  Shylock  nor  the  story  of 
Antonio  as  individuals  dominated  the  mind  of 
Shakespeare  as  he  built  up  the  play,  but  rather 
the  two  men  as  distinct  types  of  the  bigot.  An- 
tonio is  the  bud  of  bigotry,  young  and  unformed 
in  his  prejudice.  He  hates  Shylock  for  no  deal- 
ings that  he  has  had  with  him,  on  account  of  no 
injustice  suffered  at  his  hand,  but,  as  it  were, 
from  an  inborn  prejudice,  simply  and  solely  be- 
cause he  is  a  Jew.  Shylock  is  the  fruit  of  bigotry, 
planted  in  the  fertile  ground  of  Christian  intoler- 
ance, grown  strong  on  persecution,  nourished  by 
injustice,  ripened  by  oppression  and  scorn — a  hol- 
low, empty  fruit  full  of  bitterness  and  ashes. 

Around  these  two  central  figures  are  grouped 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          91 

the  personae  of  the  play.  Each  and  every  per- 
son is  a  Christian  with  the  exception  of  Shylock's 
daughter.  And  still  as  we  examine  the  characters 
we  find  that  each  and  every  one  of  the  professed 
Christians  lack  the  one  spirit  which  should  dis- 
tinguish a  Christian — broJtjierly_loyje^-and  charity. 
All  save  Portia,  she  alone  pleads  for  the  despised 
Jew,  even  as  she  pleads  for  the  friend  of  her  be- 
loved: "What  mercy  can  you  show  him,  An- 
tonio?" 

Let  us  take  up  the  characters  one  by  one  and 
see  how  they  present  themselves  when  stripped 
of  mere  lines  and  judged  solely  by  their  action 
in  the  play.  Take,  for  instance,  Antonio.  As 
we  first  read  over  the  lines  of  the  play  our  im- 
pression of  Antonio  is  rather  pleasant.  He  is 
presented  as  an  amiable,  good-natured  young 
man;  he  is  a  professed  Christian,  a  good  citizen 
of  a  Christian  state;  a  generous  friend.  Indeed 
he  takes  particular  pains  in  almost  every  scene 
to  profess  his  Christianity.  Each  and  every  per- 
son in  the  play  who  mentions  him  comments 
upon  his  virtue  until  scene  by  scene  our  admira- 
tion grows,  until  finally  in  the  fourth  act,  when 
for  a  moment,  it  seems  that  the  trial  is  going 
against  him,  and  the  young  doctor  turns  to  him 
asking,  "Have  you  anything  to  say,"  we  are 
scarcely  surprised  at  his  angelic  demonstration 


92          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

as  lifting  his  eyes  to  Heaven  he  clasps  his  hands 
and  says  with  the  air  of  a  martyr : 
"But  little :    I  am  arm'd  and  well  prepared. 
Give  me  your  hand,  Bassanio:  fare  you  well! 
Grieve  not  that  I  am  fallen  to  this  for  you; 
For  herein  Fortune  shows  herself  more  kind 
Than  is  her  custom:  it  is  still  her  use 
To  let  the  wretched  man  outlive  his  wealth, 
To  view  with  hollow  eye  and  wrinkled  brow 
An  age  of  poverty ;  from  which  lingering  penance 
Of  such  misery  doth  she  cut  me  off. 
Commend  me  to  your  honourable  wife : 
Tell  her  the  process  of  Antonio's  end ; 
Say  how  I  loved  you,  speak  me  fair  in  death ; 
And,  when  the  tale  is  told,  bid  her  be  judge 
Whether  Bassanio  had  not  once  a  love. 
Repent  but  you  that  you  shall  lose  your  friend, 
And  he  repents  not  that  he  pays  your  debt ; 
And  if  the  Jew  do  cut  but  deep  enough, 
I'll  pay  it  presently  with  all  my  heart/' 

^^X  Then  the  ladies  in  the  audience  break  into 
tears  and  cry  out:  "Isn't  he  lovely?"  Nor  can 
we  blame  them  for  this  gushing  expression  of 
admiration.  They  have  heard  so  much  during 
four  long  acts  of  the  virtues  of  Antonio,  the  Chris- 
tian, that  now  when  they  find  him  in  imminent 
danger  of  death,  they  expect  to  see  the  wings 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          93 

sprout.  But  remember  this  impression  is  created 
by  the  lines,  by  the  beautiful  speeches  of  An- 
tonio, and  Antonio's  friends.  Throw  aside  the 
mere  lines  and  judge  Antonio  solely  by  the  part 
that  he  plays  in  the  great  dramatic  picture  of  the 
play,  and  his  character  suddenly  assumes  a  guise 
that  we  little  dreamed  of  from  the  mere  lines. 
This  young  man  who  says  he  is  a  Christian,  well 
prepared,  and  ready  to  meet  his  God,  is  what? 
A  young  man  in  the  prime  of  life  who  spit  in 
the  face  of  an  old  man  sixty  years  and  more,  who 
kicked  him  and  called  him  a  dog,  and  pulled 
him  by  the  beard,  and  all  for  what  ?  For  no  rea- 
son than  that  he  was  a  Jew.  Take  Shylock's 
own  words  to  Antonio's  face : 

"Signior  Antonio,  many  a  time  and  oft 

In  the  Rialto  you  have  rated  me 

About  my  moneys  and  my  usances : 

Still  have  I  borne  it  with  a  patient  shrug ; 

For  sufferance  is  the  badge  of  all  our  tribe. 

You  call  me  misbeliever,  cut-throat  dog, 

And  spit  upon  by  Jewish  gaberdine, 

And  all  for  use  of  that  which  is  mine  own. 

Well  then,  it  now  appears  you  need  my  help : 

Go  to,  then ;  you  come  to  me,  and  you  say 

'Shy lock,  we  would  have  moneys' :  you  say  so ; 

You  that  did  void  your  rheum  upon  my  beard, 


94 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 


And  foot  me  as  you  spurn  a  stranger  cur 
Over  your  threshold :  moneys  is  your  suit. 
What  should  I  say  to  you  ?    Should  I  not  say 
'Hath  a  dog  money  ?    Is  it  possible 
A  cur  can  lend  three  thousand  ducats?'  or 
Shall  I  bend  low  and  in  a  bondsman's  key, 
With  bated  breath  and  whispering  humbleness, 
Say  this, — 

'Fair  sir,  you  spit  on  me  on  Wednesday  last ; 
You  spurn'd  me  such  a  day ;  another  time 
You  called  me  dog ;  and  for  these  courtesies 
I'll  lend  you  thus  much  moneys'  ?" 

It  is  not,  then,  the  Jewish  blood  of  Shylock 
that  has  hardened  his  heart;  it  is  not  his  Hebrew 
religion  that  makes  him  the  devil  that  he  is ;  but 
it  is  the  Christian  people  around  him  who  lack 
the  spirit  of  Christ — the  spirit  of  brotherly  love. 
Lest  there  should  be  any  doubt  about  the  cause 
of  Shylock's  hate  Shakespeare  makes  it  still  more 
obvious  in  the  scene  with  the  jailer  when  he  says : 

"He  hath  disgraced  me,  and  hindered  me  half 
a  million;  laughed  at  my  losses,  mocked  at  my 
gains,  scorned  my  nation,  thwarted  my  bargains, 
cooled  my  friends,  heated  mine  enemies;  and 
what's  his  reason?  I  am  a  Jew.  Hath  not  a 
Jew  eyes  ?  Hath  not  a  Jew  hands,  organs,  dimen- 
sions, senses,  affections,  passions?  Fed  with  the 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          95 

same  food,  hurt  with  the  same  weapons,  sub- 
ject to  the  same  diseases,  healed  by  the  same 
means,  warmed  and  cooled  by  the  same  winter 
and  summer,  as  a  Christian  is  ?  If  you  prick  us, 
do  we  not  bleed?  If  you  tickle  us,  do  we  not 
laugh?  If  you  poison  us,  do  we  not  die?  and 
if  you  wrong  us,  shall  we  not  revenge?  If  we 
are  like  you  in  the  rest,  we  will  resemble  you  in 
that.  If  a  Jew  wrong  a  Christian,  what  is  his 
humility?  Revenge.  If  a  Christian  wrong  a 
Jew,  what  should  his  sufferance  be  by  Christian 
example  ?  Why,  revenge.  The  villany  you  teach 
me,  I  will  execute;  and  it  shall  go  hard,  but  I 
will  better  the  instruction." 

Moreover  it  is  significant  that  while  Shylock 
admits  a  deep  hatred  for  the  Christians  as  Chris- 
tians, his  hate  never  reaches  the  point  of  frenzy 
until  he  finds  that  his  daughter  has  fled  with 
Lorenzo. 

"The  curse  never  fell  upon  our  nation  till  now ; 
I  never  felt  it  till  now,  two  thousand  ducats  in 
that ;  and  other  precious,  precious  jewels.  I  would 
my  daughter  were  dead  at  my  foot,  and  the 
jewels  in  her  ear !  would  she  were  hearsed  at  my 
foot,  and  the  ducats  in  her  coffin !" 

Take  up  the  next  important  character  in  the 
play,,  Bassanio.  What  do  we  find  here  ?  An- 
other professed  Christian.  A  man  presumably 


96          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

a  little  older  than  Antonio.  From  his  lines  one 
can  scarcely  help  loving  him.  The  genial,  big- 
hearted,  loud-spoken  fellow.  But  the  more  close- 
ly we  study  his  position  in  the  picture,  his  action 
in  the  movement  of  the  play,  the  less  respect  we 
have  for  him.  It  is  Bassanio  who  brings  An- 
tonio and  Shylock  together,  though  he  knows 
they  hate  and  despise  one  another.  His  object 
in  bringing  them  together  is  selfish;  he  wants 
to  borrow  money.  There  is  only  one  word  that 
would  express  the  character  of  Bassanio — today 
we  would  call  him  a  roue.  He  has  run  the  gamut 
of  his  vices,  he  has  squandered  his  patrimony, 
and  now  if  he  can  find  a  good,  virtuous,  Christian 
woman,  who  has  money  enough  to  support  two, 
he  is  ready  to  settle  down  and  become  a  pillar 
of  the  church. 

He  would  borrow  money  that  he  might  go  and 
sue  for  the  hand  of  Portia,  the  heiress ;  and  while 
it  is  true  he  protests,  nevertheless  he  permits  his 
dear  friend,  Antonio,  to  pledge  his  very  life  that 
the  money  may  be  secured.  This  is  the  man  that 
raves  at  the  Jew,  that  calls  him  beast  because 
the  Jew  demands  his  bond ;  but  when,  by  a  mere 
technicality  he  gets  the  better  of  the  Jew  he 
would  crush  the  very  life  out  of  him;  rejoices 
that  he  is  deprived  of  all  means  of  living;  of 
his  very  faith  that  he  values  really  more  than 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          97 

life.  This  is  another  specimen  of  the  Christian 
that  made  Shylock  what  he  was. 

Take  another  example,  Lorenzo.  He  too  is  a 
Christian,  much  professed.  He  will  not  marry 
Jessica  unless  she  throws  aside  her  Jewish  faith, 
but  it  is  very  significant  that  his  Christian  scruples 
do  not  extend  to  the  Jew's  money.  He  accepts 
that  without  any  qualms  of  conscience  or  violence 
to  his  professed  Christianity. 

Another  splendid  example  is  Launcelot  Gobbo, 
who  is  so  dreadfully  shocked  at  the  possibility  of 
a  Christian  marrying  a  Jew.  Professed  Chris- 
tianity is  made  evident  in  his  every  speech,  still 
he  is  the  young  man  who  meets  his  blind  father 
in  the  roadway  and  jokes  with  him,  the  butt  of 
the  jest  being  the  purity  o'f  his  own  mother. 

But  perhaps  the  most  striking  example  of 
satire  woven  by  Shakespeare  into  this  picture  of 
professed  Christianity  without  the  spirit  of  Christ 
is  in  the  daughter  of  Shylock.  In  the  opening 
of  the  play  Jessica  is  a  Jew,  during  the  action  of 
the  play  she  becomes  a  Christian — she  steps  from 
the  synagogue  into  the  Christian  church.  What 
has  caused  this  change  of  heart?  What  remark- 
able illumination  has  been  going  on  in  the  mind 
of  this  young  girl  to  lead  her  from  the  synagogue 
into  the  church  of  Christ?  I  have  read  the  play 
over  many  times  looking  for  some  preparation  on 


98          SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

the  part  of  Jessica  to  change  her  from  a  Jew 
to  a  Christian,  and  about  the  only  preparation  I 
can  find  is  that  she  robbed  her  father, — stole  even 
his  marriage  ring,  a  thing  sacred  in  the  eyes  of 
every  Jew,  and  peddled  it  away  for  a  monkey. 
She  runs  away  with  her  lover  in  the  darkness 
of  the  night,  she  dressed  in  boy's  clothing,  and 
there  is  no  mention  made  of  when  he  married 
her.  According  to  the  laws  of  Venice,  then  in 
force,  she  could  not  have  been  married  in  Venice, 
and  Shakespeare  is  discreetly  silent  as  to  when 
the  ceremony  took  place.  And  still  the  Christians 
receive  her  in  open  arms,  welcome  her  into  their 
homes  and  their  families.  Not  one  word  is  said 
of  the  obligation,  according  to  the  law  of  God 
and  the  law  of  the  church,  of  which  she  is  now  a 
member,  that  she  restore  the  ill-gotten  goods,  and 
pay  back  what  she  has  stolen  from  her  father — 
it  is  all  right;  she  has  robbed  a  Jew. 

This  is  to  me  the  whole  significance  of  the  last 
act — the  picture  of  Shylock's  daughter  received 
with  open  arms  by  the  Christians  who  have  ruined 
and  degraded  her  father.  The  old  man  is  cast 
out,  the  daughter  that  robbed  her  father  and 
desecrated  her  father's  house  is  received  in  and 
exalted,  and  smiles,  and  is  joyous  though  her 
father  is  an  outcast. 

If  we  need  any  further  marks  of  the  true  mean- 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.          99 

ing  of  the  play  we  need  only  turn  to  the  casket 
scene.  This  scene  has  always  been  the  mystery 
of  the  play.  It  does  not  belong  to  the  play  when 
viewed  as  a  comedy.  It  mars  the  dramatic  ac- 
tion; it  destroys  the  literary  unity  of  the  com- 
position. It  is,  as  it  were,  a  little  play  within  a 
play,  and  has  always  been  looked  upon  as  one 
of  the  blunders  of  Shakespeare.  But  the  very 
moment  we  realize  that  satire  is  the  theme  of 
the  play — satire  on  the  Christian  society  that  dis- 
regarded the  spirit  of  Christ — at  once  the  casket 
scene  has  a  connecting  link  with  the  rest  of  the 
play,  and  holds  a  meaning,  and  significance,  and 
a  value  in  the  development  of  the  theme  which 
would  justify  Shakespeare  in  retaining  it  in  the 
composition. 

"I  may  neither  choose  whom  I  would,  nor  re- 
fuse whom  I  dislike;  so  is  the  will  of  a  living 
daughter  curbed  by  the  will  of  a  dead  father.  Is 
it  not  hard,  Nerissa,  that  I  cannot  choose  one,  nor 
refuse  none?"  . 

"Your  father  was  ever  virtuous ;  and  holy  men, 
at  their  death,  have  good  inspirations ;  therefore, 
the  lottery,  that  he  hath  devised  in  these  three 
chests  of  gold,  silver,  and  lead, — whereof  who 
chooses  his  meaning  chooses  you, — will,  no 
doubt,  never  be  chosen  by  any  rightly,  but  one 
who  shall  rightly  love.  But  what  warmth  is 


100        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

there  in  your  affection  towards  any    of    these 
princely  suitors  that  are  already  come  ?" 

In  the  casket  scene  we  have  a  dutiful  daughter 
bound  by  the  superstitious  mandate  of  a  dead 
father.  The  great  crucial  question  of  her  life 
must  be  decided,  not  by  her  own  judgment,  or 
the  common  sense  of  her  superiors,  but  by  the 
binding  chance  of  a  choice  of  caskets.  And  she, 
poor  child,  bound  in  an  almost  superstitious  awe 
of  the  dead  father's  wish  is  ready  to  submit  to 
the  ordeal.  This  gives  Shakespeare  an  opportun- 
ity to  present  before  his  audience  a  representa- 
tive of  each  civilized  nation,  and  when  the  rep- 
resentative has  presented  himself,  and  sued  for 
the  hand  of  Portia,  what  is  her  estimate  of  these 
Christian  gentlemen : 

"Ay,  that's  a  colt  indeed,  for  he  doth  nothing 
but  talk  of  his  horse ;  and  he  makes  it  a  great  ap- 
propriation to  his  own  good  parts,  that  he  can 
shoe  him  himself.  I  am  much  afeard  my  lady 
his  mother  played  false  with  a  smith."  . 

"He  doth  nothing  but  frown ;  as  who 
should  say,  'if  you  will  not  have  me,  choose':  he 
hears  merry  tales  and  smiles  not:  I  fear  he 
will  prove  the  weeping  philosopher  when  he 
grows  old,  being  so  full  of  unmannerly  sadness 
in  his  youth.  I  had  rather  be  married  to  a 
death's-head  with  a  bone  in  his  mouth  than  to 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        101 

either  of  these.  God  defend  me  from  these  two !" 
.  "God  made  him,  and  therefore  let  him 
pass  for  a  man.  In  truth,  I  know  it  is  a  sin  to  be 
a  mocker :  but,  he ! — why,  he  hath  a  horse  better 
than  the  Neapolitan's;  a  better  bad  habit  of 
frowning  than  the  Count  Palatine :  he  is  every 
man  in  no  man ;  if  a  throstle  sing,  he  falls  straight 
a  capering:  he  will  fence  with  his  own  shadow: 
if  I  should  marry  him,  I  should  marry  twenty 
husbands.  If  he  would  despise  me,  I  would 
forgive  him,  for  if  he  love  me  to  madness,  I 
shall  never  requite  him."  .  .  .  "You  know 
I  say  nothing  to  him;  for  he  understands  not 
me,  nor  I  him :  He  hath  neither  Latin,  French 
nor  Italian;  and  you  will  come  into  court  and 
swear  that  I  have  a  poor  pennyworth  in  the 
English.  He  is  a  proper  man's  picture;  but, 
alas,  who  can  converse  with  a  dumb-show?  How 
oddly  he  is  suited !  I  think  he  bought  his  doub- 
let in  Italy,  his  round  hose  in  France,  his  bon- 
net in  Germany,  and  his  behaviour  everywhere." 

"That  he  hath  a  neighborly  charity  in  him; 
for  he  borrowed  a  box  of  the  ear  of  the  English- 
man, and  swore  he  would  pay  him  again  when 
he  was  able.  I  think  the  Frenchman  became 
his  surety,  and  sealed  under  for  another."  . . 

"Very  vilely  in  the  morning,  when  he  is  so- 


102        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

ber;  and  most  vilely  in  the  afternoon,  when  he 
is  drunk:  when  he  is  best,  he  is  a  little  worse 
than  a  man;  and  when  he  is  worst,  he  is  little 
better  than  a  beast :  and  the  worst  fall  that  ever 
fell,  I  hope  I  shall  make  shift  to  go  without  him." 

"Therefore,  for  fear  of  the  worst,  I  pray  thee, 
set  a  deep  glass  of  English  wine  on  the  con- 
trary casket ;  for,  if  the  devil  be  within  and  that 
temptation  without,  I  know  he  will  choose  it.  I 
will  do  anything,  Nerissa,  ere  I'll  be  married  to  a 
sponge." 

"If  I  live  to  be  as  old  as  Sibylla,  I  will  die 
as  chaste  as  Diana,  unless  I  be  obtained  by  the 
manner  of  my  father's  will.  I  am  glad  this  par- 
cel of  wooers  are  so  reasonable;  for  there  is 
not  one  among  them  but  I  dote  on  his  very 
absence;  and  I  pray  God  grant  them  a  fair  de- 
parture." 

This  is  surely  a  strong  picture  which  Shakes- 
peare presents  before  us.  Shylock  and  Antonio 
stand  in  the  center  and  around  them  grouped 
the  personae  of  the  play,  all  Christians.  The  at- 
mosphere from  the  first  to  the  closing  line  is 
distinctly  Christian,  and  still  we  find  not  a  sin- 
gle person  in  the  play  possessed  of  the  spirit  of 
Christianity — charity,  with  the  exception  of  Por- 
tia. She,  indeed,  is  not  a  perfect  Christian,  but 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        103 

in  her  simple  way  exemplifies  the  spirit  of  char- 
ity. 

Shakespeare  was  too  great  a  genius  to  leave 
the  entire  picture  lacking  that  spirit  of  Christ. 
Such  an  arrangement  of  characters  would  be  in- 
explicable viewed  in  any  other  light  than  as  a 
sneer  at  professed  instead  of  practical  Christian- 
ity. Moreover,  the  very  lines  of  the  composi- 
tion seem  to  favor  my  view  of  the  piece  rather 
than  the  accepted  idea  of  comedy. 

If  Shakespeare  intended  the  play  for  a  com- 
edy, then  Shylock  would  naturally  be  presented 
as  a  type  of  the  Jew  to  be  laughed  at,  and 
sneered  upon,  whilst  as  a  fact  he  has  presented 
a  character  in  Shylock  which,  despite  its  moral 
monstrousness,  compels  our  admiration  and,  at 
times,  wonder.  Take  for  instance  the  Rialto 
scene.  Read  carefully  the  lines  and  you  will  see 
that  the  Shylock  presented  is  not  a  weak  fool 
to  be  laughed  at,  but  a  most  shrewd  and  far- 
seeing  business  man,  in  touch  with  every  move- 
ment in  the  world  of  commerce: 

"Ten  thousand  ducats  for  three  months — three 
months  from  twelve — and  then  the  rate."  Care- 
fully he  calculates  the  risk  of  the  loan,  and  the 
possible  loss  from  short  time  placing.  He  knows 
each  venture  of  Antonio  in  the  business  world, 
he  estimates  the  chances  of  venture  by  sea,  he 


104        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

calculates  the  significance  of  each  vessel  and  port 
of  destination.  In  every  way  keen,  intelligent, 
and  quick-witted.  In  the  age  of  slow  communi- 
cation— no  telegraphs,  no  shipping  reports,  no 
mail  system — it  is  simply  marvelous  the  grasp  he 
has  of  affairs.  He  sneers  at  the  ventures  of  An- 
tonio, and  his  judgment  in  later  events  is  veri- 
fied. Doubtful  of  Antonio's  safety  he  throws 
away  business,  and  craftily  seeks  to  entangle  the 
Christian  in  an  obligation  to  the  Jew.  To  induce 
his  enemy  to  accept  favor  at  his  hands,  he  an- 
gers Antonio,  and  when  his  judgment  is  weak- 
est from  passion  presents  his  plea  of  friendship. 
The  old  Jew  plays  with  the  educated,  intelligent 
Christian  merchant.  If  there  be  a  laugh  in  this 
scene  it  is  on  the  Christian  entrapped  by  the  su- 
perior craftiness  of  the  Hebrew. 

But  the  most  convincing  argument  against  the 
accepted  theory  of  comedy  is  in  the  fact  that  close 
study  of  Shylock  convinces  us  that  no  author, 
who  pretended  any  knowledge  of  the  Hebrew 
race,  would  build  up  such  a  character  as  Shylock 
as  a  typical  Jew.  It  is  true  he  is  born  of  a  Jew- 
ish mother,  Hebrew  blood  flows  in  his  veins,  he 
swears  by  the  faith  of  Abraham,  but  he  utterly 
lacks  the  national  characteristics  of  his  race.  As 
a  miser  Shylock  might  indeed  stand  for  an  in- 
dividual Jew,  but  as  the  individual  he  would  be 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        105 

false  to  his  blood.  "Art  presents  for  our  con- 
sideration, not  the  individual,  but  the  type,  the 
species,  the  genus." 

When  a  true  artist  wishes  to  create  a  charac- 
ter he  studies  not  a  single  person.  He  would 
reproduce  not  a  mimic,  a  counterpart  of  one  man, 
for  such  a  character  would  be  intelligible  only 
to  such  as  would  know,  or  had  met  the  individ- 
ual. The  true  artist  studies  the  whole  class,  or 
nation,  or  species  from  which  he  would  take  his 
character.  He  notes  not  the  peculiarities  of  in- 
dividuals, but  the  common  traits,  the  national 
characteristics,  the  universal  tendencies,  and  in- 
corporates as  much  or  as  many  of  these  general 
traits  into  one  person;  he  builds  up  the  char- 
acter that  must  live  and  be  intelligible  to  all  times 
because  it  is  typical. 

So  with  Shakespeare.  If  he  intended  Shylock 
to  stand  for  the  Jewish  people  we  must  find  in 
the  character  as  presented  the  accepted  traits,  the 
national  characteristics  of  the  Hebrew  people. 
Now,  do  we  find  these  in  Shylock? 

Let  us  take  up  just  three  of  the  most  noted  and 
commonly  accepted  characteristics  of  the  Jew. 

1st.  He  is  essentially  a  commercial  man.  Bar- 
ter is  to  him  a  pleasure,  not  a  burden.  He  will 
buy  and  he  will  sell.  If  there  be  one  chance  in 
a  hundred  in  a  business  deal  the  Jew  will  take 


106        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

that  chance,  and  strangest  of  all  he  will  come  out 
benefited.  He  will  buy  anything  you  have  to 
sell,  and  he  will  sell  it  back  to  you  at  a  profit. 
They  have  dominated  the  commerce  of  the  world. 
Most  of  the  so-called  religious  persecutions  of 
the  Jew  were,  and  are  really  the  Christian  plod- 
der's frantic  effort  to  wreck  the  chariot  of  Jew- 
ish commercial  craft  to  save  himself  from  being 
crushed  under  its  rushing  wheels. 

We  see  none  of  these  in  Shylock.  He  will  not 
buy,  he  will  not  sell.  He  laughs  at  the  chances 
of  trade;  he  is  a  miser.  He  holds  the  dollars  in 
his  hands,  and  he  will  make  one  dollar  breed 
another. 

2nd.  The  hospitality  of  the  Hebrew  is  pro- 
verbial. A  Jew  will  share  his  last  dollar  with  a 
brother  Jew.  His  home  life  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
perfect  of  any  nation.  A  Jew  will  never  turn 
away  a  fellow  Jew  in  need.  If  he  has  but  one 
meal  he  will  take  his  fellow  Jew  in.  If  you  doubt 
this  take  experience  as  the  proof.  Have  you 
ever  seen  a  Jew  beggar,  unless  in  the  days  of 
actual  persecution?  I  can  safely  say  no,  never. 
You  may  open  your  door  any  morning  and  find 
a  Christian  catholic,  methodist,  baptist  beggar  for 
a  meal,  but  never  a  Jew,  and  why?  Because  the 
Jew  is  hospitable;  the  Jew  home  is  an  open  house 
to  his  kind.  Hospitality  is  the  tradition  of  the 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        107 

race.  Abraham  entertained  angels  unawares; 
they  were  strangers  in  the  city,  and  he  took  them 
in  and  found  them  the  messengers  of  God.  This 
tradition  is  handed  down  from  father  to  son,  and 
so  no  Jew  needs  seek  help  from  the  "unclean" 
gentile. 

3rd.  The  crowning  glory  of  the  Jew  is  his 
pride  of  blood:  "We  are  the  people  of  God; 
we  are  the  elect  of  nations.  In  our  veins  flow 
the  blood  of  Abraham,  of  David,  of  Solomon, 
and  of  Christ."  A  Jew  without  the  pride  of 
blood,  without  the  arrogance  of  his  nation  would 
be  but  the  caricature  of  a  man,  lacking  the  very 
love  of  living. 

Do  you  see  any  of  these  characteristics  in  Shy- 
lock?  With  all  his  hatred  of  the  Christians,  with 
all  his  frenzy  at  the  flight  of  his  daughter,  his 
ducats,  and  his  jewels  are  the  subject  of  his  lam- 
entations. He  values  his  gold,  and  his  gems  more 
than  the  desecrated  blood  of  a  Jewish  virgin.  "I 
would  my  daughter  were  dead  at  my  foot,  and 
the  jewels  in  her  ear!  would  she  were  hearsed  at 
my  foot,  and  the  ducats  in  her  coffin!  . 
I  know  not  what's  spent  in  the  search :  why,  thou 
loss  upon  loss!  The  thief  gone  with  so  much, 
and  so  much  to  find  the  thief."  He  would  have 
the  jewels  even  in  the  dead  girl's  ears.  He  would 
grasp  the  ducats  even  from  her  coffin.  Why, 


108        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

this  would  be  blasphemy  to  the  mind  of  a  Jew. 
"Unclean  is  the  gold,  and  cursed  is  the  jew- 
els in  a  dead  woman's  hands."  Why,  this  man 
is  no  Jew;  he  lacks  every  national  characteristic 
of  the  Hebrew  people,  and  any  true  Jew  would 
shrink  from  him  with  horror.  He  is  not  the 
product  of  Hebrew  blood,  not  a  child  of  Jew- 
ish faith.  He  is  the  product  of  the  tainted  at- 
mosphere he  breathes  of  the  false  Christian 
world  that  lacks  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

If  this  talk  could  do  you  no  more  good  I  would 
beg  of  you  to  read  over  once  more  The  Merch- 
ant of  Venice,  not  as  a  comedy,  but  as  a  great 
satire.  Put  Shylock  in  the  center  of  the  pic- 
ture, study  each  character  in  relation  to  the  cen- 
ter, and  the  characters  will  take  on  a  covering 
never  dreamed  of  before,  the  lines  will  flow  with 
a  new  meaning;  instead  of  a  second  rate  play, 
instead  of  a  mere  bid  to  the  vulgar  rabble  you 
will  find  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice  the  master- 
piece of  Shakespeare — the  one  work  in  the  En- 
glish language  where  the  author  has  carefully 
differentiated  between  the  spoken  lines  and  the 
action  of  the  individual  in  the  play.  To  me  it 
is  the  greatest  satire  in  the  language  or  litera- 
ture of  the  world. 

Any  student  who  will  take  up  this  method  of 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        109 

studying  the  works  of  literature  as  word  pic- 
tures, as  a  single  mental  impression,  worked  out 
in  dialogue,  and  seek  the  central,  dominating 
thought,  not  only  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  but 
most  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  will  take  on 
a  new  charm  and  a  deeper  significance. 


l\tng  Hear 

For  example,  King  Lear  is  persistently  pre- 
sented and  spoken  of  as  the  tragedy  of  ingrati- 
tude, and  still  viewed  as  a  picture  the  ingrati- 
tude of  Lear's  daughters  is  only  a  detail  in  the 
great  composition.  Lear  himself  dominates  the 
play  completely  to  the  exclusion  of  everybody 
and  everything  else.  Place  him  in  the  center 
of  the  picture,  grouping  his  daughters  and  the 
other  characters  of  the  play  around  him,  and 
we  find  that  Lear  has  made  the  tragedy  just 
what  it  is.  Lear  himself  first  shows  ingratitude 
when  he  banishes  Kent,  thus  giving  the  example 
of  ingratitude  to  his  daughters.  It  is  Lear  who 
first  shows  cruelty  and  vindictiveness  in  his  treat- 
ment of  Cordelia.  It  is  Lear  who  from  the  very 
opening  lines  of  the  play,  and  afterwards  in  his 
conduct  of  himself  and  his  men,  who  shows  the 
self-willed  tyrant,  who  has  never  learned  the  les- 
son of  considering  others.  From  this  central  fig- 
ure of  the  picture  we  find  these  various  vices 
reflected  in  his  children,  and  the  tragedy  is  really 
the  tragedy  of  "The  sins  of  the  father  visited 
unto  the  third  and  fourth  generation."  From  out 
of  his  loins  his  vices  hath  gone  forth,  and  live 
again  in  his  ofifspring.  Even  the  savage  love  of 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        Ill 

Lear  is  reproduced  in  Cordelia.  Stubbornly  she 
refuses  to  boast  of  a  love  that  is  really  the  con- 
suming passion  of  her  life.  She  would  not  bend 
even  in  her  love  to  curb  the  anger  of  a  father 
king.  She  is  truly  and  pre-eminently  the  daugh- 
ter of  Lear,  as  indeed  are  Goneril  and  Regan, 
but  in  a  lesser  degree.  Goneril,  the  older  daugh- 
ter, by  her  headstrong  determination  to  rule  in 
her  own  house,  and  Regan  by  her  cold  and  heart- 
less cruelty  of  her  father.  It  is  to  enunciate  this 
that  Shakespeare  drags  in  the  story  of  The  Earl 
of  Glaucester,  who  finds,  like  Lear,  that  the  sins 
of  his  youth  find  him  in  his  old  age,  and  the 
offspring  of  his  vices  begotten  in  joy  is  like  the 
sins  that  begot  it,  perfidious  and  selfish. 


jHadbetf) 

Again,  in  Macbeth,  we  are  constantly  study- 
ing the  tragedy  of  ambition,  while  as  a  fact 
Julius  Caesar  is  the  tragedy  of  ambition.  It  is 
not  ambition  that  starts  moving  or  makes  pos- 
sible the  tragedy  of  Macbeth.  Macbeth,  like 
every  other  man  in  his  position,  has  always  had 
hopes  and  longings  and  ambitions,  but  it  is  only 
when  superstition  enters  into  his  life,  when  the 
witches  send  forth  their  prophecy,  that  Macbeth 
and  his  lady,  fired  with  superstition,  feel  them- 
selves strong  enough  to  cope  with  the  genius  of 
the  king: 

"Two  truths  are  told, 
As  happy  prologues  to  the  swelling  act 
Of  imperial  theme. — I  thank  you,  gentlemen. — 

This  supernatural  soliciting 
Cannot  be  ill;  cannot  be  good;  if  ill, 
Why  hath  it  given  me  earnest  of  success, 
Commencing  in  a  truth  ?    I  am  thane  of  Cawdor : 
If  good,  why  do  I  yield  to  that  suggestion 
Whose  horrid  image  doth  unfix  my  hair 
And  make  my  seated  heart  knock  at  my  ribs, 
Against  the  use  of  nature?    Present  fears    • 
Are  less  than  horrible  imaginings: 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        113 

My  thought,  whose  murder  yet  is  but  fanatical, 
Shakes  so  my  single  state  of  man  that  function 
Is  smother'd  in  surmise,  and  nothing  is 
But  what  is  not." 

Had  Macbeth  turned  a  deaf  ear  and  a  smile 
of  scorn  upon  the  witches  and  their  prophecy, 
the  awful  tragedy  would  never  have  transpired. 
Macbeth,  then,  is  really  the  tragedy  of  supersti- 
tion.   That  as  Banquo  says: 
"That,  trusted  home, 
Might  yet  enkindle  you  unto  the  crown, 
Besides  the  thane  of  Cawdor.    But  'tis  strange: 
And  oftentimes,  to  win  us  to  our  harm,, 
The  instrument  of  darkness  tell  us  truths, 
Win  us  with  honest  trifles,  to  betray's. 

It  is  true  I  love  Shakespeare,  perhaps  more 
than  any  other  great  author,  but  not  alone  for 
his  splendid  lines,  not  because  of  his  matchless 
verse — I  love  him  because,  to  me,  he  is  the  one. 
autljpr  who  understands  the  human  soul.  He 
is  the  one  author  who  carries  out  the  true  philos- 
ophy of  human  life  in  the  drawing  of  his  charac- 
ters. 

I  can  remember  myself  as  a  young  man  in 
the  world,  and  I  thought  I  knew  men,  and  in 
my  inexperience  believed  they  were  bad  just  be- 


114        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

cause  they  wanted  to  be  bad.  I  can  remember 
the  day  when,  in  my  simplicity,  I  believed  that 
thousands  of  women  were  grabbed  by  the  arms 
of  hell,  and  dragged  down  into  that  maelstrom 
of  vice  in  our  land,  out  of  very  viciousness  of 
spirit.  But  I  have  grown  older  since  then;  I 
know  the  world  far  better  today:  I  have  been 
a  priest  and  a  doctor  of  souls  long  enough  to 
be  able  to  say  to  you  tonight  that  in  all  this 
wicked  world  I  do  not  believe  there  is  any  man 
or  any  woman  who  is  all  bad.  I  care  not  how 
deep  he  has  sunken  into  crime;  I  care  not  how 
far  she  may  have  wandered  away  from  the  law, 
God  knows  that  at  some  hour  in  each  sinner's 
life  he  stands  down  there  in  the  valley  of  sin 
and  looks  up  at  the  mountain  of  God's  right- 
eousness, and  yearns,  God  only  knows  how  that 
sinner  is  yearning,  to  get  back  to  the  life  that 
seems  lost  forever. 

O !  how  truly  Shakespeare  brings  this  out  in 
his  plays.  No  man  in  our  language  has  painted 
more  deep-dyed  villains  than  has  Shakespeare. 
He  has  spared  nothing  to  make  his  sinners  dev- 
ils in  human  guise,  and  still,  perhaps  with  the 
single  exception  of  lago,  there  is  not  a  villain 
in  Shakespeare  that  at  some  hour  in  his  life  his 
bosom  is  not  thrown  open,  and  you  see  a  soul 
quivering  under  the  eyes  of  God. 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        115 

Take  for  example  Macbeth.  He  has  murdered 
the  king;  he  has  grasped  the  crown,  and  still  in  Jf 
the  midst  of  lights  and  flowers  and  music,  and 
women  in  festive  attire,  he  sees  the  ghost — the 
shadow  of  his  conscience.  See !  Lady  Macbeth, 
she  seeks  her  couch  after  the  turmoil  of  the  day, 
and  all  night  long  acts  over  the  scene  of  the 
murder. 

Look  at  the  king  in  Hamlet.  He  has  murdered 
his  brother;  he  has  married  his  brother's  wife; 
he  has  grasped  the  crown ;  even  now  he  is  plot- 
ting the  murder  of  the  young  Hamlet;  and  still 
at  midnight  hour,  when  the  world  has  left  him 
and  his  courtiers  are  gone — and  he  enters  his 
own  room,,  casts  aside  his  kingly  garments — he 
is  a  man,  alone  with  the  Eternal  God.  How  he 
trembles  like  a  coward,  and  like  a  child  down  on 
his  knees ;  he  wants  to  pray,  the  murderer  wants 
to  pray: 

"But  O,  what  form  of  prayer 
Can  serve  my  turn?    'Forgive  me  my  foul  mur- 
der?' 

That  cannot  be,  since  I  am  still  possessed 
Of  those  effects  for  which  I  did  the  murder, 
.      .      .     What  then?     What  rests? 
Try  what  repentance  can :  what  can  it  not  ? 
Yet  what  can  it  when  one  can  not  repent? 


116        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

O  wretched  state !    O  bosom  black  as  death ! 
O  limed  soul,  that  struggling  to  be  free 
Art  more  engaged !    Help,  angels !  Make  assay ! 
Bow,  stubborn  knees,  and,  heart  with  strings  of 

steel, 

Be  soft  as  sinews  of  the  new-born  babe! 
All  may  be  well." 

A  sea  of  blood  rolls  between  his  guilty  soul 
and  the  merciful  eyes  of  God. 

See  Richard  III,  that  devil  in  human  form. 
"  He  has  sailed  his  craft  of  state  on  a  sea  of  blood 
up  to  the  English  throne.  Men,  women  and  chil- 
dren have  been  thoughtlessly  cast  aside  that  he 
might  sit  upon  the  English  throne,  and  still  on 
the  last  night  of  his  life,  when  alone  in  his  tent, 
he  throws  himself  on  his  couch  and  tries  to  sleep. 
See  how  Shakespeare  makes  him  moan  and  groan 
and  cry  out  in  his  sleep  the  names  of  the  mur- 
dered dead:  "Mercy,  Clarence,  mercy,"  until, 
springing  from  his  couch  in  a  very  fever  of  fear, 
he  cries  out : 


"Shadows  tonight 

Have  struck  more  terror  to  the  soul  of  Richard, 
Than  can  the  substance  of  ten  thousand  soldiers 
Armed  in  proof,  and  led  by  shallow  Richmond." 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        117 

What  is  all  this?  Can't  you  see  it  is  the  con- 
science? It  is  the  soul  of  man  made  to  the  im- 
age and  likeness  of  the  Eternal  God.  You  may 
cover  it  over  with  the  dirt  of  sin ;  it  may  be  cov- 
ered with  the  cobweb  of  damnation;  you  may 
sear  it  and  mark  it,  but  underneath  it  all  lives 
the  image  of  God.  It  is  like  the  coal  smolder- 
ing down  there  under  the  ashes  when  you  think 
the  fire  is  all  burnt  out — it  only  needs  a  Christian 
hand  to  brush  away  the  ashes  of  sin — one  breath 
of  God's  divine  love  and  it  flares  up  again  into 
a  living  fire,  the  image  of  the  great  Creator. 

This  is  the  genius  of  Shakespeare.  This  is 
the  immortal  spirit  that  will  not  die.  It  is  not 
his  splendid  lines;  it  is  not  his  matchless  verse, 
for  Shakespeare  has  been  translated  into  every 
language  on  the  continent,  and  he  lives  immor- 
tal in  each  and  all,  because  language  was  not 
his  power,  words  were  not  his  genius. 

Indeed,  I  think  our  English  reader  seldom 
makes  a  greater  mistake  than  when  he  calls 
Shakespeare  the  great  poet.  He  is  not  the  great 
poet.  It  is  true  Shakespeare  is  a  great  poet,  but 
he  is  not  the  poet  par  excellence.  Poetry  is  es- 
sentially creative.  Poetry  lives  in  the  realms  of 
the  imagination.  Poetry  does  depend  upon 
words,  and  music,  and  measure,  and  rhyme. 
Poetry  may  instead  of  does.  As  a  poet  Shakes- 


118        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

peare  would  not  compare  with  either  Schiller  or 
Goethe.  He  has  left  us  no  purely  poetic  work 
that  would  compare  with  Faust,  and  no  man  who 
understands  the  genius  of  poetry  will  mention 
the  name  of  Shakespeare  in  the  same  sentence 
with  that  of  the  immortal  Dante.  The  best  poetic 
work  of  Shakespeare  is  really  in  his  comedies, 
and  perhaps  for  this  reason  has  been  least  appre- 
ciated by  the  English  public. 

But  though  I  am  not  willing  to  grant  him  the 
title  of  the  poet  par  excellence,  to  me  he  is  per- 
haps more.  He  is  the  interpreter  of  God's  great 
book  of  nature.  He  is  the  portrait  painter  of 
the  human  soul — every  heart's  desire,  every  soul's 
ambition,  every  mighty  ideal  from  the  cradle  to 
the  grave. 


I  would  not  have  you  believe  that  I  do  not 
advocate  or  admire  the  close  study  and  analy- 
sis of  a  work  of  literature.  Indeed,  I  question 
if  any  man  more  highly  prizes  the  value  of  an- 
alysis or  the  intellectual  pleasure  to  be  derived 
therefrom,  but  I  firmly  hold  that  such  study  be- 
longs to  the  advanced  student,  and  not  to  the 
beginner;  to  the  matured  thinker,  and  not  to  the 
student  groping  in  the  dark.  Let  the  student 
first  see  the  beauty  of  the  work  as  a  whole.  Let 
him  become  familiar  with  the  style  and  when  he 


SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.        119 

knows  its  beauties,  when  he  understands  some- 
thing of  the  material  he  will  instinctively  yearn 
to  study  deeper,  and  learn  every  detail  of  the 
thing  which  he  loves. 

Were  a  child  to  gain  its  knowledge  of  flowers 
merely  from  the  analysis  of  the  class  in  botany 
we  would  have  few  lovers  of  nature  and  her  beau- 
ties.  So  in  the  garden  of  literature.  Let  the 
young  mind  first  see  the  flowers  blooming  glori- 
ously in  the  sunshine ;  let  them  drink  in  the  frag- 
rance, let  them  view  the  coloring,  let  them  thrill 
with  the  delicate  shades,  and  forms,  and  then, 
with  love  and  reverence,  pluck  the  flower  from 
its  stem,  and  sitting  down  with  microscope  and 
lens  seek  the  mysteries  of  its  being.  And  no- 
where will  they  find  more  pleasure  in  this  analy- 
sis than  in  the  beautiful  flowers  of  Shakespeare. 
******  * 

Kipling  says  that  the  works  of  great  men  are 
windows  through  which  we  may  look  down  into  \/ 
their  souls.  If  this  be  true,  and  I  know  it  is, 
think  of  the  possibilities  for  you  and  me  to  take 
up  once  more  our  volumes  of  Shakespeare — great 
Gothic  windows  through  which  we  may  look 
down  into  the  soul  of  the  greatest  author  that 
ever  lived — and  you  will  find  him  there  today, 
as  in  the  years  gone  by,  writing  not  mere  plays 
to  while  away  the  hours,  not  mere  poems  to  sat- 


120        SERMONS  FROM  SHAKESPEARE. 

isfy  a  vulgar  rabble,  but  to  give  to  the  world 
some  of  the  greatest  sermons  ever  conceived  by 
a  human  mind  or  executed  by  a  merely  human 
hand.  You  will  find  what  I  have  found,  and 
thousands  of  other  beauties  in  these  hidden  ser- 
mons in  Shakespeare. 


on 

If  my  estimate  of  Shakespeare  and  his  works 
and  motives  needs  support,  I  could  scarcely 
find  a  stronger  confirmation  than  has  been  af- 
forded in  the  widely  discussed,  and  much  mar- 
velled at  essay  on  Shakespeare  by  Count  Leo 
Tolstoy. 

He  has  set  himself  up  as  the  iconoclast  of 
the  theories  of  commentators  on  Shakespeare. 
He  tears  into  shreds  the  traditions  of  genera- 
tions ;  he  scoffs  at  what  he  calls  quasi-hypno- 
tism  of  the  admirers  of  the  Bard  of  Avon.  He 
declares  Shakespeare  gross,  unnatural,  false, 
insincere,  and  lacking  in  ideals ;  (ideals  as  Tol- 
stoy understands  ideals)  and  why?  Because 
Tolstoy  has  sought  for  realism  in  Shakespeare, 
and  does  not  find  it.  He  seeks  a  photograph 
of  life  and  finds  an  ideal  picture,  which  Tolstoy 
can  never  understand. 

Shakespeare  is  not  a  photographer  of  the 
mere  material  forms  of  life  as  they  passed  be- 
fore him.  Shakespeare  paints  souls.  He  moves 
the  lips  that  hearts  may  speak.  Tolstoy  says 
Shakespeare  exaggerates,  and  this  is  because 
he  (Tolstoy)  does  not  understand  that  it  is  the 
soul  that  Shakespeare  presents,  and  not  the 


122  A  WORD  ON  TOLSTOY. 

mere  materialized  person,  who,  in  life,  masks 
his  soul  with  his  face  of  clay. 

Tolstoy  wants  realism.  He  would  give  us 
the  face  of  clay  at  any  cost,  even  though  it 
hides  the  living,  pulsing  heart  beneath.  Shake- 
speare, yearning  for  truth,  would  distort  the 
face  in  order  that  we  may  see  the  cringing  soul 
beneath. 

Tolstoy  would  convict  our  Master  of  false- 
ness, and  unchristian  faith,  because  he  deifies 
action  as  opposed  to  inaction;  (which  in  spite 
of  Tolstoy's  objection,  is  very  good  philoso- 
phy) because  he  finds  himself  compelled  to 
distinguish  between  the  abstract  Christian 
love,  and  love  as  existed  in  the  hearts  of  so- 
called  Christian  people. 

Tolstoy  is,  and  has  ever  been,  an  extremist. 
He  is  never  satisfied  with  striving  for  ideals. 
He  wants  every  principle,  and  every  ideal  real- 
ized in  the  concrete.  When  Tolstoy  is  not  a 
dreamer,  he  is  a  materialist.  He  can  never 
conceive  an  ideal  as  ideal  or  abstract.  He 
wants  it  materialized.  He  can  never  fully 
understand  that  the  ideal,  whilst  indeed 
merely  possible  of  realization,  would  cease  to 
be  an  ideal  when  grasped,  and  moulded  into 
material  form.  The  Christian  ideal  is  super- 


A  WORD  ON  TOLSTOY.  123 

natural,  and  therefore  unobtainable  by  natural 
effort.  Shakespeare  knew  this,  and  made  his 
people  strive  after,  but  seldom  reach,  their 
ideals. 

Tolstoy  cannot  appreciate  this  viewpoint. 
He  cannot  grasp  the  value  or  beauty  of  an  ab- 
stract, or  love  merely  the  ideal. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  he  is  disappointed  in 
Shakespeare,  who  does  exaggerate,  who  does 
distort  the  natural  picture  in  order  to  bring 
-more  clearly  before  us  the  minds,  the  souls,  the 
hearts  of  the  people,  that  through  the  material 
picture  we  may  see  the  intellectual  vision, — 
the  true  picture  of  life. 

Tolstoy's  declaration  enunciates  exactly  what 
I  have  been  claiming  throughout  my  lec- 
tures on  Shakespeare,  that  if  we  judge  the 
Great  Master  solely  from  the  standpoint  of 
technique  he  will  fall  below  the  measure  of 
the  mediocre.  Tolstoy's  objections  and  criti- 
cisms deal  entirely  with  the  material  form — 
the  word,  the  expression,  because,  like  thous- 
ands of  other  readers,  he  has  been  so  busy 
with  the  material  structure  that  he  has  failed 
to  catch  the  soul. 

Tolstoy,  from  his  viewpoint,  is  right  in  his 
estimate  of  Shakespeare,  but  his  viewpoint  is 
wrong.  If  art  is  a  child  of  the  animal-man ;  if 


124  A  WORD  ON  TOLSTOY. 

art  is  merely  a  material  copy,  then  indeed  has 
Tolstoy  struck  the  chord  of  truth  in  his  criti- 
cism. But  if  art  is  a  child  of  the  God-man; 
if  art  is  purely,  or  even  quasi-intellectual,  then 
is  Shakespeare  the  master,  and  the  work  is 
true. 

It  is  simply  a  matter  of  viewpoint,  Tolstoy 
standing  at  one  extreme,  and  "Sermons  from 
Shakespeare"  at  the  other. 


Kenfield-Leach  Co.,   Printers,   Chicago 


